How To Maximise Your Brain's Performance - Louisa Nicola

Louisa Nicola 0:00 There's many studies that have been done on basketball players. A lack of sleep can go through and interfere with reaction time. It can interfere with visual acuity, their ability to see the ball at the speed of light and react to it. So that's the software things. Their ability to think fast, that really goes down, and that's diminished. One second for LeBron James can mean the difference between winning and losing, right?

Chris Williamson 0:24 (wind blowing) Louisa Nicola, welcome to the show.

Louisa Nicola 0:26 (laughs) Chris, so happy to be here.

Chris Williamson 0:29 How would you describe what you do for work?

Louisa Nicola 0:32 Well, uh, my company, Neurathletics, is literally the intersection of neuroscience and athletic performance. Uh, a-around six years ago, I would say, six years ago, 2016, I saw a gap in that market, where I was looking at athletes, I was training athletes. I had a neuroscience background and I thought, "Why is everybody obsessed with making these athletes better by just working on their speed and agility? Why are we not working on their brains?" The brain is the powerhouse of the entire system. So that's what I did. I just started my company and started working on the brain.

Chris Williamson 1:06 Okay. But you don't just work with athletes, right?

Louisa Nicola 1:09 Correct. So right now... So at the start, at the conception, Neurathletics was purely athletes, and then we moved into an only, uh, Major League Soccer, NFL, and NBA pathway. And then just by chance, two years ago, we, uh, we got the attention of the finance world. And let me tell you, their brains are, uh, their brains are, are in dire need of Neuroathletics. So we now service, uh, some of the financial world.

Chris Williamson 1:34 What's the similarities between a portfolio manager and an athlete?

Louisa Nicola 1:38 Uh, lack of sleep, first and foremost. Secondly, competitiveness. Thirdly, they've got that ability to do whatever it takes. They're not just getting up for a, for a day job at 9:00 AM and putting their suit on. They have to train like athletes to get the best results. Some of the guys I'm working with tell me, "Louisa, if I don't make this trade tonight, if I'm not in the peak state to make a good trade, I could lose $30 million."

Chris Williamson 2:04 Okay. So slightly high stakes. When you actually put it like that, you think, "Oh, he's kicking a ball about." You know? He's kicking-

Louisa Nicola 2:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:09 ... a ba- kicking a ball into a goal. What does it matter? It's not $30 million. Um, you said that both of them were underslept. Do you find that your athletes, on average, are underslept? Is that something specific to athletes, or do you think that this is just the entire world is underslept and athletes are a subsection of the world?

Louisa Nicola 2:27 Very good question. So I think everybody, not just athletes and portfolio managers, I think everybody is underslept. Now, just 12 hours ago on Twitter, I posted a tweet saying, "Guys, I think I have it all wrong. I've been talking about sleep deprivation, but instead, why don't I talk about, why don't we say REM sleep deprivation or slow-wave sleep deprivation?" I think, um, I think we've got it all wrong when we talk about sleep deprivation. Now, a lot of people in society are sleep-deprived. Now, sleep-deprived is classified as six hours or less. I live in New York City. Almost everybody in the city is sleeping six hours or less. It's a hustle city. But then also, now because of technology, because of what we're eating, because of how we're going out, the fact that the pandemic has brought us inside, we are being exposed to things that are keeping us up longer throughout the night, but also disrupting our patterns of getting into deep sleep and slow-wave and, and REM sleep. So I coined this, this new phenomenon, I think, of 2022. Instead of somebody saying, "I'm sleep-deprived," I'm gonna say, "Well, what part of sleep-deprived are you?" D- Are you lacking REM sleep or you're lacking deep sleep?

Chris Williamson 3:40 Yeah. Well, most people aren't tracking, on average. You know, there's some freaks amongst us-

Louisa Nicola 3:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:45 ... that are, that have got a WHOOP strap or that wear an Oura ring, but not many people are. And it was only when I started wearing an- a WHOOP strap that I realized time in bed doesn't equal time asleep, and time asleep doesn't always equal the same amount of quality of sleep. Even though you-

Louisa Nicola 4:02 Yep.

Chris Williamson 4:02 ... you wake up on the morning and you realize there's something good, right? Wrong side of the bed syndrome. Um, but the fact that even about, whatever, 85% efficiency or a 90% efficiency, say, which is pretty good, like it's, that's, that's all right. Um, you need to be in bed for nine hours to get eight hours, and the number of people that are in bed for nine hours is, uh, um, basically zero.

Louisa Nicola 4:25 Yeah. And sometimes that's a struggle for me, especially now being in Australia. But here's the thing. You're wearing a WHOOP strap. So I wear all three. Now, what we know when we're talking about sleep physiology, in order to really understand sleep apnea... Okay, I'll go through a sleep study. You have to go into a lab and they hook you up with all of these machines. They start with the head, the eyes, you've got an oximeter, a nasal cannula. Now, that is, that, that gives you a very precise measurement, okay, of your sleep stages. How can we possibly mimic that outside of the lab? Well, companies such as Oura, WHOOP, other companies have now invented these wearables. But the accuracy is where I, I, I think we need to talk about. You're wearing a WHOOP. I'm wearing an Oura right now. Uh, studies show that the Oura has a better PSG reading, sleep study reading.

Chris Williamson 5:14 What's PSG?

Louisa Nicola 5:15 Oh, it's, uh, polysomnography. That's basically a sleep study-

Chris Williamson 5:19 Okay. Okay.

Louisa Nicola 5:19 ... when you go into a lab. So it kind of mimics... Uh, I think it was, the statistics are around 87% it mimics what's happening in the lab. Whereas the WHOOP strap is a bit different. It's more so better for exercise and performance and HRV tracking.

Chris Williamson 5:33 Do you know what the percentage was for the WHOOP?

Louisa Nicola 5:36 I don't. But my thing is, when I wear the WHOOP, sometimes at night it can be... It slides around on your hand. Sometimes you wake up and it's, like, misfolded. So maybe that's the, uh, maybe that's what's happening.

Chris Williamson 5:48 Getting back to brain health. We'll talk about sleep in a bit, but

Chris Williamson 5:51 what, what do you mean when you talk about a high-performing brain? What, what is that?

Louisa Nicola 5:56 (sighs) So we've got, when we look at the brain, we've got both the software and the hardware, the hardware being the actual brain itself. Okay? And we can have many problems wrong with that. For example, when an NFL player has a concussion-... that's really messing with the hardware, okay? They could have a dent in their brain, they could build up tauopathies within that area. But then there's the software, which is how are you thinking? How are you feeling? What are your thoughts doing in your brain? It's like the cognitive part of it. How's your reaction time? So I work with both of those. Now, with anything, in terms of progression, how are we meant to measure things? So, what we do with all of our athletes is we measure them in month one. They come into ... They come and see us, whether it's in person or whether it's online, and we do an actual EEG scan. So we put a cap on them, we're measuring their brain waves, we're understanding what's happening with both the ho- software and the hardware. And then from that, we then put in a, a performance program, and that could consist of upping their vitamins or upping their EPA/DHA, which is known as fish oil. We look at sleep because sleep has an impact on the brain. We look at reaction time, we look at visual acuity, and we even do breath work because breath work is another major factor affecting the hardware and the software.

Chris Williamson 7:10 Mm.

Louisa Nicola 7:12 So if I, I would say if you've got a high-performing brain, there's probably about 10 different set points, and if you're a 10 out- 10 out- 10 out of 10 for all of those set points, then that would be a high-performing brain.

Chris Williamson 7:23 What does it look like on a biological level?

Louisa Nicola 7:27 You're a bit ... So do you mean like ...

Chris Williamson 7:29 What's the ... When you l- go inside of a scan, what do you see? Do you see more connections? Is it to do with the speed of the synapses firing? What's it actually mean?

Louisa Nicola 7:36 Yeah. So it's the speed, okay? It's the speed. We look at, um, we look at information processing speed. Your ability for your eyes to perceive a stimulus, relay it back to your brain and for your brain to understand what it is. So that speed, it could be 0.4, it could be 1.4. So obviously the 0.4 would be better, and this is measured in milliseconds. So why do we want that? Well, you think of driving. A lot of traffic accidents happen on the road because of reaction time or sleep deprivation. So we're looking at everything. Your ability to make a decision at work, whether to make the trade or not make the trade, to make the phone call or not make the phone call is all dependent on your information processing speed. And then there's also decision-making skills. So when they're doing the scan, they're looking at ... It's not just a scan. Like it's a hospital-grade EEG, but you're not just sitting there, you're doing a task. We can have them reacting to something on the screen. So it measures that in real time.

Chris Williamson 8:34 What sort of things are you getting them to do? What are the tasks?

Louisa Nicola 8:38 Look, I, I spent 16 hours, uh, with that EEG on watching one of our NBA players just do jump shots. It was a very hard day.

Chris Williamson 8:48 Hang on. He's got the cap on while he's training?

Louisa Nicola 8:51 Yeah. Yeah. We just had him doing jump shots, and I was literally measuring what is happening when he's getting the ball in the basket. And I don't sh- speak technical when I'm talking about sports because I just don't know the technicality of it.

Chris Williamson 9:03 Right. I understand.

Louisa Nicola 9:04 But ... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:04 That must be ... So there, there'll be a particular pathway, right?

Louisa Nicola 9:09 Yes.

Chris Williamson 9:09 There'll be a sequence, a common sequence of particular neurons that need to fire in order for the throw-the-ball-toward-the-basket-

Louisa Nicola 9:17 Yeah. And so basically-

Chris Williamson 9:17 ... action to be deployed.

Louisa Nicola 9:19 A- and we can put this on a, a trader, for example, entire month, and we can measure at what time, what was his brain doing at the time he made a good trade? What was his brain doing at the time he made a bad trade? So then we can then predict. We can then pull the software and predict when he's gonna make a good trade or not.

Chris Williamson 9:37 Hmm. What are the main principles that people should consider when they're trying to maximize their brain's performance?

Louisa Nicola 9:43 Oh gosh. Do you have a few days?

Chris Williamson 9:46 Yep.

Louisa Nicola 9:46 (laughs) Yes. So first one that I ... And I'm gonna talk about the ones that I think are not

Louisa Nicola 9:52 spoken about, okay? That are looked over. First one is hydration. Chris, you've, uh, you've been drinking some water. We've only been on this call for 15 minutes. Okay? You're hydrating. It's so important for the brain to be hydrated. Now, we have anywhere from 80 billion neurons in the brain, nerve cells. In order for them to think, react, produce a movement, or do anything, those two brain cells need to synapse together. You mentioned that earlier. It's when they fire together. In order for them to fi- fire together, we have a pump called the sodium-potassium pump. So literally our brain ... Where, where have you heard sodium and potassium? Electrolytes, right? So our brain really needs to be hydrated to literally do anything. When we're dehydrated, we're not thinking straight, we're not being able to produce many things. So I always say keep hydrated, not just with water, but with electrolytes too. So we have an electrolyte protocol at Neuro Athletics. We do sweat tests. So f- some of our athletes are sweating a lot more than the others, and we determine that sweat test. We think, "Okay, if you're sweating this much, this is how many electrolytes you're losing." So we dose them for that pre-game, post-game, and throughout the day. So that's number one. Okay? The second thing is consistency. Your brain is actually pretty dumb, okay? It's just this hunk of meat sitting inside your skull, but it likes consistency. It likes to wake up at the same time every day and go to sleep at the same time every day. It also doesn't like to be shocked. When it's shocked, it doesn't ... It's not really prepared for anything. So consistency with sleep routines, morning routines, eating habits, et cetera. Then we can move on to more of the pharmacological aspect. Now, outside of normal pathologies, if you've got any diseases, et cetera, there are certain nutrients that our brain likes. Our brain is literally made up of DHA, and if you look at an omega-3 supplement, a fish oil, okay, omega-3s consist of EPA, DHA, and ALA. So I'm always supplementing with EPA/DHA. I do two milligrams in the morning, two milligrams at night. There's so many benefits. You're not just feeding your brain, but you're also lowering inflammation. We know that inflammation in a chronic state is bad for us, both neurally and physiologically. So one of the, the utmost biggest protocols that we do with our athletes is you've gotta be having EPA/DHA.I would urge, you know, everybody out there to be looking at the, the scientific literature on that.

Chris Williamson 12:21 Do you have any brands-

Louisa Nicola 12:22 And this-

Chris Williamson 12:22 ... that you suggest particularly 'cause I'm gonna guess that there's some changes in the quality?

Louisa Nicola 12:27 Oh, yeah. I speak about that as well. Manufacturing right now is at, uh, it's a scary thing out there. You don't know sometimes what you're buying. You know, some of the, some of the drugs that they're selling just at the supermarket, you know, you don't know what they're laced with. So, manufacturers matter. Now, the brand that I use is Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E. Why? Well, they've got so many certifications. I know them, uh, fr- like, I've gone in, I've really researched, I've done my research on them. Manufacturing is clean. And you also want, when you're having an EPA DHA, sometimes you know that the quality of an, of a fish oil when you have it and you feel that you can s- taste the fishiness of it. Have you ever felt that and it's like, "This is disgusting"?

Chris Williamson 13:08 Yes.

Louisa Nicola 13:09 Yes. So, that's how you know the quality of it. So, it really matters what you're having, okay? If when you're ingesting it, and if you're, when you're ingesting the EPA DHA, if it smells, it's got that fishy st- smell or s- taste, you know it's not of good quality. So, everything else, you know, when we're talking about supplementation, we do that, okay, but then there's also what are you supplementing at night to get a good quality sleep, okay? Because we know that sleep is one of the determining factors of brain performance. So, what are you doing at night to get yourself into deep sleep stages? Now, I have a, a, I have a sleep stack, I would say, a sleep protocol, and it consists of, the first one is magnesium L-threonate. I take this every night. First and foremost, magnesium, okay, we know magnesium, that it would be good for the body. There's three types of magnesium. We have it when we want a stress relief and have, you know, better functioning muscles, recovery, et cetera. But there's one magnesium out of those three that crosses the blood-brain barrier, and that is magnesium L-threonate. So, once it crosses the blood-brain barrier, it's gonna calm down your nervous system. It's gonna get you into deep sleep. So, that's one of the, the sleep protocols that we have, magnesium L-threonate. And then for some of our athletes or clients, some of them are feeling as if they've got a racing mind at night. So, we may get them to supplement with GABA, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So, these are things that, um, you know, without wafting on too much that you can be doing at night or during the day.

Chris Williamson 14:46 What's your thoughts on, uh, 5-HTP?

Louisa Nicola 14:50 I don't supplement with it, but I'm noticing a lot of men asking me this question. Not women for it. So, uh, I can't comment on it 'cause I don't have it, but I have noticed that Andrew Huberman talks about that a bit.

Chris Williamson 15:02 Okay. What about dosage for the magnesium? What would you aim for?

Louisa Nicola 15:07 Um, I've ... It's a ... So the one that I get is from Pure Encapsulations or Life Extension. It's a blue bottle and you have to take three at night. So-

Chris Williamson 15:16 Okay. So, you're just following the recommended dosage based on whatever it says on the bottle?

Louisa Nicola 15:21 Well, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:21 Cool. Okay. Yeah. Does, um, Jigsaw Health do a Mag SRT? And that's one that's pretty well touted. Ben Greenfield's a big fan of that. That's pretty good. Um-

Louisa Nicola 15:31 And that's ...

Chris Williamson 15:32 Yeah, yeah. It is. Um, they have a magnesium chelate pre-bed-

Louisa Nicola 15:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:38 ... drink thing, which is okay, but because it's ... I, it must have some sort of bicarb in it or something to help it mix with the water. And if you have that last thing before you go to bed, I always end up finding myself needing to sit up and burp. It's like the most weird byproduct of having a sleep drink. That you think, oh, yeah, but the fact that it's fizzy means that I need to ... so anyway. What about, um, exercises? So, let's say that that's some of the principles behind making your brain healthier. What about

Chris Williamson 16:06 things that people could do, exercises that you take your athletes and your traders through to try and improve their mental capacity?

Louisa Nicola 16:13 Oh, so many. So, one thing that we focus on is Zone 2 training and that's when you're, you know, we've got different zones of training obviously. Maybe Zone 5 would be at maximum. Zone 2 is that comfortable pace where you can talk, but you're also exercising. Okay? And we measure this through our VO2 max testing. So, we do a lot of Zone 2 and the reason being is that this area of exercise is the most efficient to be training the quality of the mitochondria. And mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell so once we get out of, uh, a Zone 3, once we get into Zone 3 and Zone 4, we're training outside of that mitochondria. So, that's one area that we train because we also focus on longevity, okay? Everyone knows that an athlete has an expiration date, so we're focusing on longevity as well. But the next part of it is, so the reason why Neuro Athletics really came into play or existed was because I was doing a lot of reaction training, you know? I was working just with a tennis ball and a couple of lights back in 2016, just getting them to throw the ball to the wall. And what I found this was doing was it was training different areas of the brain, were working on hand-eye coordination, so their ability to see a target, catch a ball, use reflexes, and then I started working from there. I got them to stand on one foot, throw the ball to the wall, contralateral movements with the brain. So, we were doing so much with hand-eye coordination and that's how Neuro Athletics really came into play. So, if you want to do any- anything for your brain in terms of exercise and train it to its fatigue, you wanna be doing, you just wanna get a tennis ball. We're actually gonna bring out some neuro balls, but I'm trying to figure out a way to, to, to name that better.

Chris Williamson 17:58 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 17:58 A little-

Chris Williamson 17:58 Yeah, neuro anything with balls in is-

Louisa Nicola 18:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:01 ... is gonna be difficult. Just going back to the Zone 2, uh-

Louisa Nicola 18:04 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:05 ... duration and frequency per week, what would you say?

Louisa Nicola 18:08 Three times per week for one hour or around 50 minutes at minimum.

Chris Williamson 18:12 Okay. So, it's a big commitment for-

Louisa Nicola 18:15 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:15 ... this, especially if you're an athlete, you've got your other training to do, skills and work and stamina and blah, blah on top, um-But I suppose that's probably not a bad active recovery day?

Louisa Nicola 18:27 Exactly. It's a-

Chris Williamson 18:28 Is that how you try to use it?

Louisa Nicola 18:29 I use it like that depending on who I'm talking to because some of the, um... I've got, you know, a 56-year-old male who's in the trading business, and I, he's s-, he may be very unhealthy, so I'll just get him to do zone two, yeah, three hours a week, and he does that on a stationary bike.

Chris Williamson 18:44 Yep.

Louisa Nicola 18:44 It's so easy. He's got one set up in the living room. He's got kids, so he's just on that. No hard. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:50 What's the heart rate range that people should be aiming for to hit zone two-ish?

Louisa Nicola 18:55 Well, see, this is the thing. The, the, the science suggests that you shouldn't just work on heart rate. But for my athletes, we do, okay, because I do a VO2 max test for them. So we have a-

Chris Williamson 19:05 Yours is always rated against what their max is?

Louisa Nicola 19:08 Exactly. Everybody's different. But if you wanna measure it, it's really around 65% of maximum HR, which you know is really easy. It's just walking around, really.

Chris Williamson 19:19 Am I right in thinking that zone two, for that sort of duration, for that sort of frequency, is also what would be prescribed if you wanted to raise the ceiling on your HRV as well?

Louisa Nicola 19:30 Well, yeah, look. So HRV is another, uh, uh, it can, it can raise HRV values, yes, and that's purely because you're working within that space. You're working on the mitochondria. If you really wanna get technical, you wanna measure your blood lactate, and that's what we do. The only caveat on that is who wants to pinprick themselves every time they're riding, right?

Chris Williamson 19:51 Okay.

Louisa Nicola 19:51 And make blood?

Chris Williamson 19:53 Let's say that someone does want to take the ceiling of that HRV up. What would your prescription be for that person?

Louisa Nicola 19:59 Well, we know that HRV, or heart rate variability, reflects how adaptable your body can be. It measures the specific changes in time between successive heartbeats. So we know that we've got resting heart rate. We've got, we've got our actual heart rate. We know that it's measuring the time between those two heartbeats, okay? And it's basica- basically a measure of your autonomic nervous system, which is everything that is happening automatically, so we know it's a good measurement of health and recovery. So if we wanna be working on that, then we know that, okay, first and foremost, we need to really have a recovery day, okay? Or we need to be doing recovery things during the day. Second thing is it's dependent on food intake, okay? All the quality, or if you're having alcohol or any type of drugs per se, that's gonna go in and mess with your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, okay? So we, we wanna, we want a way to stabilize everything. So sleeping well, sleeping consistently, hydrating, getting adequate exercise. All of these things are gonna eventuate into a, a higher or more stable HRV.

Chris Williamson 21:09 That is keeping HRV more stable and also acutely making it as optimal as possible. How about raising the ceiling of HRV overall, taking it from 100 or a, a maximum green recovery on your Whoop being 70, to a maximum green now being able to be 80 or 90 or 100? What are some of the things you could do to raise that ceiling?

Louisa Nicola 21:32 Well, it's measured during sleep, okay? So it's, uh, I don't know if you know that, but it basically goes in, uh, whether it's an Oura Ring or whether it's a Whoop shop, you're basically going in, and it's taking a two-minute, two to four-minute measurement during your sleep. So if we're not in a deep sleep stage or we're not, we haven't recovered properly, you're not gonna get a high enough value. So if we really wanna raise the roof, then I would say the number one thing you need to work on is sleep.

Chris Williamson 21:56 Okay, cool. What about the impact of sleep on brain performance then? What are the-

Louisa Nicola 22:04 Yup.

Chris Williamson 22:04 ... what are the impacts that you see there?

Louisa Nicola 22:07 Look, it's not just brain performance. It's also immunity, okay? So sleep or sleep deprivation plays an, uh, a number of key roles, okay? Now, I've pulled up, um, if you don't mind, I've pulled up a study that I reference a lot, but I really wanna get it right for you and your audience, okay? There was a really, a very famous study, and it was done i- in the journal of PNAS. What they did was they took a group of healthy adults, and they limited them to six hours of sleep a day for one week. They found a change in the activity of 711 genes, okay? So we've got a gene, uh, uh... Our genes, our e- epigenetic pool, we're, we've got ge-, uh, the human genome is around 20,000 genes. From getting lack of sleep of six hours a night resulted in the change of 711 genes. That's around 3% of our entire genome. What they found was out of that 711, about half of the genes were upregulated, and half of them were downregulated, okay? The ones that were impaired... When we say downregulated, that means impaired. The genes that were downregulated were the ones associated with the immune system, okay? And the ones that were upregulated were the ones associated with tumor production, long-term chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease. So that's really important to know that only after one week, you're changing your epigenetics. You're changing your human gen- you're changing the genes. That's a, that's insane to think about, right? Because we're all sleeping. Sometimes we've gone through a week. I'm sure you've gone through literally seven days of sleep deprivation somewhere in your life, especially for, for par- new parents out there. And in that time, you're probably finding that, you know when you're working so hard and then all of a sudden when you stop, you get sick? It's the same thing. So it's pretty much the same thing. So sleep deprivation or sleep impacts immunity, okay? But then let's go into more of an, another thing, and I'll, I'll give you the link to that, um, to that article. Let's talk about why athletes need sleep. First of all, back to the software, okay? What we see, there's many studies that have been done on basketball players where we see that a lack of sleep...... can go through and interfere with reaction time. It can interfere with visual acuity, their ability to see the ball at the speed of light and react to it. Okay? So that's the, that's the software things. Their ability to think fast, that really goes down, and that's diminished, which one second for LeBron James can mean the difference between winning and losing, right? That's the first thing. But then let's look at more of a hardware thing. Okay? When we fall asleep, we go through three stages of sleep in the first, in the first third of the night. Okay? We go through stage one, two, and three. That's comprised of deep sleep. Okay? Slow wave sleep. During these stages, there's one really critical thing that happens, and that's hormone secretion. Hormones are released during that stage. It occurs predominantly in stage three, which is slow wave deep sleep. These hormones are human growth hormone and testosterone. So for yourself, Chris, if you're not getting into those deep sleep stages, you're not gonna be getting the adequate release of human growth hormone or testosterone. So human growth hormone is responsible for protein synthesis and recovery and a whole bunch of other things. Babies sleep a lot, and that's why they grow fast, because they got a lot of human growth hormone. And then, have you ever heard of the saying, um, or maybe seen men that have got breasts? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:55 (laughs) Man titties.

Louisa Nicola 25:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:56 Call them what they are, Louisa.

Louisa Nicola 25:58 Listen. Well, whatever you wanna call them. You could say that it's a buildup of estrogen and a lack of testosterone. Okay? Maybe 'cause they're not getting into that deep sleep stage.

Chris Williamson 26:08 Do you see a typic- before you start working with the guys that you're floor traders, do you see a particular body style? I mean, are they built like bags of milk mostly?

Louisa Nicola 26:17 Yes, I do, and I- that's the first thing I say, and they get really upset. But hey-

Chris Williamson 26:21 Tell them that you tell these guys that are making $30 million trades that they're built like bads- bags of milk.

Louisa Nicola 26:27 I go, "Too much estrogen, you don't sleep." And they're like, "How did you know?"

Chris Williamson 26:32 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 26:32 (laughs) And they're not really coming to me with their shirts off either. I can just see it. I'm like, "No, no, leave your shirt on. It's fine."

Chris Williamson 26:37 Please-

Louisa Nicola 26:38 "I see it."

Chris Williamson 26:38 ... for the love of-

Louisa Nicola 26:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:39 ... all that is holy.

Louisa Nicola 26:41 So, so many different things happen during deep sleep, and then we move on to REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. Now during this time, your body is completely paralyzed, but your brain is still active. It's what we call the dream sleep state. But what else happens during this stage? Well, we get things such as learning, so learn- memory consolidation, and all of the learning takes place during REM sleep. So if we're not getting into these d- these two stages, it's really gonna mess us up the following day. We're gonna wake up with brain fog. We're gonna wake up feeling irritable. We're not gonna be remembering things, and we're also not gonna be able to execute to the best of our abilities. So we really need to be optimizing for sleep, and that's a, that's a really big thing that we focus on at Neuro Athletics because there's coaches out there. So we work with one particular NBA team, and I'm actually going through and coaching the trainers and the coaches 'cause they're like, "Well, we didn't know this." Everyone's just working on the c- on the ball skills, you know? The speed drills-

Chris Williamson 27:38 No one thinks about what's happening when they go home at night. How long did you play Xbox for? What time did you get up? What's your pre-bed routine like? Yeah.

Louisa Nicola 27:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:46 It's some... What, how does, how does sleep debt and sleep repayment work? Is that a thing?

Louisa Nicola 27:53 No. Sleep is not like a bank. So if you go into debt, you can't go through and pay it back. So once you lose sleep, that's it. You're done. That's why I don't like binge sleepers, people who are like, "That's okay. I'll sleep five hours during the week, maximum productivity, and then just, you know, build it up on the weekends." It doesn't work like that.

Chris Williamson 28:12 That's a shame.

Louisa Nicola 28:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:14 Because that would be... Well, I mean, what can you do? Let's say that you do have a bad night's sleep. Presumably, sleeping a little bit more the following night isn't a bad idea.

Louisa Nicola 28:23 Well, no, of course not. There was actually, I just put out, um, two weeks ago, there was a, a study that was just, um, that's just come out in a very high stringent journal that says there's no such thing as, as too much sleep.

Chris Williamson 28:34 Okay.

Louisa Nicola 28:35 Meaning, sorry, meaning that we know what happens. We know the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain and the body, but when you have too much sleep, there's not really much that happens. You just, maybe you're fa- you might get a bit fatter over the course of-

Chris Williamson 28:49 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 28:51 There's nothing bad that happens, which I think is great, but that doesn't mean-

Chris Williamson 28:54 That would be a good study to run. You know, if you could-

Louisa Nicola 28:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:57 ... try and somehow get people to sleep 12 hours a night or 14 hours a day, I guess, for 7 days or 14 days and try and record the changes there, that'd be really interesting.

Louisa Nicola 29:09 I'd be more interested in finding out why they have time to sleep that much.

Chris Williamson 29:14 Because they're not high-powered floor traders, that's why.

Louisa Nicola 29:18 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 29:18 They're not selling, selling their soul to Goldman Sachs. That's the reason why. But, yeah, I mean, and so he- here's another thing that I've got in my mind. There must be a tension. You go into these high-powered trading floors. I think that athletes, on the whole, probably would be more accommodating to, "I understand that I need to sleep. This is my entire life. It's geared around performance," but not many people treat their output at work, on a trading floor, with the same level of rigor that athletes do, right? They're not going in to get a massage to loosen off whatever it is or the equivalent mentally. How do you get someone who isn't bought into the world of, "I need more sleep than I'm getting," high-powered, go-getting, type A people who wear massive ties and pinstripe suits, how do you get them to let go of that sort of hustle and grind mentality?

Louisa Nicola 30:11 Well, actually, I find the reverse. Okay? I find, and I didn't ever think this, I see the sporting world as... Now, I've got some athletes who say to me, "Well, Louisa, I'm, I am number one," or, "I'm in the NBA. What's the..." You know? "I don't, I don't wanna be like LeBron. I'm already in the NBA. I'm doing better than 99% of the world. I don't really need to get better." They're the ones that annoy me, whereas the traders are the ones who...... saying, "Well, if I'm not at that state, then I'm gonna lose $30 million." So they do everything they can. Actually, they're more coherent and obedient to the method, the Neuro Athletics method, than the athletes. That's surprising. Also... Yeah, both of them do re- do go through jet lag. A lot of them are, both groups, are flying, okay? So, that's another thing that, you know, the athletes are getting on and off planes, especially during the playoffs. Some of them are doing three play- three flights a week, and they're feeling it. And they're just a bit, you know, like... So we've got jet lag protocols as well. Whereas the, there's more consistency in the finance world.

Chris Williamson 31:13 Yeah, that's interesting. I suppose the markets are always gonna open at the same time, which is going to give them that sort of rigidity that they need.

Louisa Nicola 31:19 But also, you think, if- if a player is gonna play mediocre, okay? Let's just say he's in Miami Heat. He plays mediocre, he's not gonna lose $30 million. He might just, just not play as well, but he's got the team carrying him. If the day trader needs to make a trade on Saturday at 3:00 AM, he makes a mediocre trade, he can lose a lot of money.

Chris Williamson 31:39 Okay, so the pressure on a trading floor is much more on the individual, and the changes in his performance are a lot more acute. Yeah, that's- that's interesting. I suppose specifically with basketball, um, it is such a team sport, you know, you could have, you could probably have a player that has an absolute stinker of a game and the team still win.

Louisa Nicola 31:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:59 And maybe the coach is thinking, "Oh, he had a bad day," but they'll probably forget about it because the team won. As opposed to the accountability that you get being on a trading floor, and if you make that bad decision and you're 30 grand in the red, someone somewhere is going to come and shout at you.

Louisa Nicola 32:14 Oh, yeah. Or you've, like, lost the life savings of a family.

Chris Williamson 32:19 Or that, yes.

Louisa Nicola 32:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:20 What are... Talk me through your, um, pre-bed or your optimal pre-bed routines. You know-

Louisa Nicola 32:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:26 I know that everyone that's listening will be familiar with the digital sunset, but realistically, what's the sort of minimum viable dose or the most compliant, easy routine that somebody could go through before they go to bed on a night?

Louisa Nicola 32:41 Well, the first thing I start with, don't make it law. Just do it as many times throughout the week that you can. If you knock off three nights a week, great. Next week we'll work on four. The first thing is not eating three hours pri- prior to falling asleep. First thing.

Chris Williamson 32:55 Anything at all?

Louisa Nicola 32:56 Yeah, we don't want any activity, we don't want any raises in cortisol, and that's what happens when you eat. We don't want anything digesting. That's the first thing, okay? The second thing is obviously we're not gonna be having any caffeine past the hour. Caffeine has a half-life of 12 hours. We don't want caffeine past 12:00 PM, okay? That's the first thing. I always say that you're preparing for sleep the moment that you wake up, okay? Now, one really important one, I struggle with this every day, and that's eliminating, like you said, digital light, but it really is bad. So, I know for some people they say, "Well, Louise, I can't do that." So I do get them to wear blue light blocking glasses, although I don't particularly believe in them 100%, but it has some small effect.

Chris Williamson 33:37 I've seen some mixed studies about them. It's-

Louisa Nicola 33:41 Well, it's... It doesn't block out all of the blue light. That's what the promise is, but it's not about that. So if we just treat it as if it blocks out some, that's a better thing to say, because it's true. Doesn't block it all out. So, but we do, you know, if we could be walking around with X-ray vision at night, then that would be great. So that is eliminating light, okay? Especially don't, you don't wanna be looking at light between the hours of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM. Now, that's that, but then it's about, there's always two complaints that you have and you have to figure this out. Do you have a problem falling asleep or do you have a problem staying asleep? So these two things offer different prescriptions. If you have a problem falling asleep, that means your brain's just going at a million miles an hour, so you may be wanting to supplement with GABA, gamma-Aminobutyric acid. But around a year ago, I caught onto the fact that there was a lot of research that was being brought out about temperature, okay? And the ability to manipulate your core body temperature to get into sleep. So, in order to fall asleep and stay asleep, our core body temperature needs to drop at least two degrees. Okay? So, that's great. So we can get cold. But then I realized that it's not about ambient temperature. It's not about, you can't just put the thermostat on or the air conditioning to get really cold. It's about core body temperature. The only real way to do that is via two things. First one is sleeping on a temperature controlled mattress or hiring somebody throughout the night to just cool you down with- with ice packs. The latter probably isn't feasible, so you have to look at a cooling bed. And around a year ago, I, somebody said, "Have you seen Eight Sleep?" They're a sleep fitness technology company, I don't know if you've heard of them, but I in- I invested in one of their mattresses, and I had the best quality of sleep that I've ever had. And so I now sleep on an Eight Sleep, uh, temperature controlled mattress. So basically, it- it locates your heart rate, okay? And it gets you, once- once it figures out, "Oh, Louise is in deep sleep," it gets you into that, um, it drops your core body temperature down by dropping the temperature of the mattress, and you're able to get into those deep sleep stages.

Chris Williamson 35:51 How does it detect that?

Louisa Nicola 35:53 It's actually, you've got a, um, you've got an app, okay? But also the bed, because it's technology driven, it's picking up on your heart rate. So in the morning, the app actually shows you-

Chris Williamson 36:04 Your bed can pick up on your heart rate through the mattress?

Louisa Nicola 36:07 It gives you HRV metrics in the morning. It says, "Louise, you slept," um, "in your deep sleep, you did..." Uh, the exact same things that you see with your WHOOP, it does the same thing.

Chris Williamson 36:17 Wow. Okay, that's pretty impressive.

Louisa Nicola 36:20 Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. And so, I partnered with the company 'cause I harassed them. I said, "I need to be part of the movement that you're doing." So, um, now I have all my athletes sleeping on that.

Chris Williamson 36:29 So I got a ChiliPAD mattress topper-

Louisa Nicola 36:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:32 ... which is-

Louisa Nicola 36:33 Oh, fantastic.

Chris Williamson 36:33 ... very, very similar sort of thing, although it doesn't know when I am, where I am.And I took it off because it was winter, and I was using it to cool me down, but now maybe I'm thinking that you're probably right because the house is quite warm, it's cold in the UK at the moment. Then ambient temperature is okay-ish, but in the bed, it's completely different to what you have going on outside. The same as whatever, being in a hot country and thinking that blasting the air con and changing the temperature of the room is going to change what happens underneath the covers.

Louisa Nicola 37:05 Exactly. I don't know, with the ChiliPAD though, it doesn't do heating, does it? Because it-

Chris Williamson 37:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It goes both ways.

Louisa Nicola 37:12 Oh, okay.

Chris Williamson 37:12 Yeah, so the two, the second one which I've got is the, um ... they've given it a stupid name and I can't remember it, so sorry, sorry, ChiliPAD. Anyway, it's the small one that goes underneath. It's like the Oro or something. And that comes with an app, uh, and the app you can change temperature throughout the night. It'll cool down to just below 16 degrees Celsius, and it'll heat up to 40 degrees or something unbelievably hot. And it'll move you throughout the night. It also has, I think Eight Sleep has this as well, where it can wake you up with, is it heat?

Louisa Nicola 37:43 Well-

Chris Williamson 37:43 But it does vibration as well, right?

Louisa Nicola 37:45 It does vibration. That's very annoying because you-

Chris Williamson 37:48 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 37:49 It doesn't, it's so irritating 'cause it doesn't stop until you get out of bed. So it's like, "Oh my God."

Chris Williamson 37:55 Oh, what a bastard.

Louisa Nicola 37:56 Yeah, so sometimes like on a Saturday, I'll just, I'll jump up, and then I'll jump back into bed.

Chris Williamson 38:00 Get back in.

Louisa Nicola 38:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:01 Outwitted your bed. You've done well. What about, um,

Chris Williamson 38:04 reducing sleep, uh, sorry, en- reducing the amount of times that you wake up throughout the night then? So that's sleep latency, maybe some GABA, make sure that people are feeling a little bit ... What about deep breathing and stuff like that actually for sleep latency? Any other ticks?

Louisa Nicola 38:19 Well, let's just define. Sleep latency is your time that it takes you to fall asleep. Okay? But when we're, you know, when we're getting up throughout the night, okay, so that's a different thing, and some people are waking up to go to the bathroom. Usually with men over the age of, um, I think it's around 65 to 70, they're waking up at 4:00 AM. It's like a thing, okay, and they're going to the bathroom. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:40 All men world- worldwide or nationwide are getting up to go and have a wiz at the same time.

Louisa Nicola 38:45 Exact same time. It's funny. Um, but what can we be doing? Well, you've got to figure out why it is that you're waking up. But in order to, like I said to you, to decrease that sleep latency, that comes down to not having a lot of activity happening in your brain and body. Breathing exercises, okay, breathing exercises are amazing. It calms down your, your sympathetic nervous system, activates the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system so you're calmer.

Chris Williamson 39:12 What would be a protocol for that, like box breathing or something?

Louisa Nicola 39:16 I like box breathing, but I actually have a, a 1:00 PM and like a 4:00 PM protocol, which is literally being silent for 10 minutes. That's all it is. Because I noticed that if you put in too many protocols, like sit there, put candles on, do this, um, things like this, it doesn't really work out. So, all it is, it's about 10 minutes of silent- silence. It's very hard. If you close your eyes and you try and keep that, um, keep that notion happening, it's very hard. But you can try it and start off with that. One thing that... I woke up this morning and one of my, um, she's a portfolio manager, she messaged me, she's like, "Had the best sleep of my life and my HRV increased because of this one technique," and I'll tell it to you. Have you ever taped your mouth during the night to-

Chris Williamson 40:00 I- I've tried it.

Louisa Nicola 40:02 ... to prevent-

Chris Williamson 40:02 I've, I've tried it. Yes. Um, it's a bit wei- it, uh, it never really seems to stay on my mouth. I don't know whether I'm, uh, trying to talk in my sleep or something, but yeah, I've tried.

Louisa Nicola 40:12 Or the sweat may have, um, ripped it off, but-

Chris Williamson 40:14 It's not that hot. Come on.

Louisa Nicola 40:15 Yeah, well, (laughs) I don't know, but (laughs) ... I got that. Um, but you... That's a great little hack, okay? Taping the mouth. Mouth breathing is, um, is bad. We don't wanna be mouth breathing. So, in order to really breathe through your nose through night, the night, you wanna tape your mouth. Just make sure that you don't, um, have any breathing issues. We don't want you...

Chris Williamson 40:38 Mm-hmm. I've used... So I've just started using, this year, uh, nasal strips to open my airway up on my nose. So you'll have seen athletes use these before. That's really, really nice, especially if you have like narrow, uh, nasal passages. That makes-

Louisa Nicola 40:55 Does it work?

Chris Williamson 40:55 Oh, it's such a difference. Yeah, it's literally like constantly having your nostrils flared, so there's so much more room. It feels really lovely. It's really satisfying. I have no idea... I haven't done it for long enough. I've only done it for maybe a week, so I haven't been able to compare. But I've tracked it on my Whoop 'cause you can give custom inputs about what you did during the day. So, I've got days when I did and days when I didn't, and we'll see if that makes any difference. But I mean, by the end of the night, I, I asked Ben Greenfield about this 'cause I think his wife is the most normal person on the planet, and Ben Greenfield is like the complete opposite, and I asked him, what does she think? He's getting into bed. He's got the blue light blockers on. He's got something stuck up his nose. He's got his finger on a HRV monitor, all of this crazy technology, and apparently his wife just, like reads a Dan Brown novel and falls and has the per- the perfect eight hours sleep that nobody ever needs to, to try and alter. Um, so yeah-

Louisa Nicola 41:47 That's risky.

Chris Williamson 41:47 ... I think there... Well, yeah, but there are going to be a lot of very odd or disgruntled partners after someone just decides to go- But whatever, you know, you're already married. They can't leave now, now that you've decided-

Louisa Nicola 42:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:01 ... to adopt a weird bedtime habit. Um, I want

Chris Williamson 42:04 to talk about the guys that you're dealing with, whether it be athletes or floor traders, about how you instruct them to stay calm under pressure.

Louisa Nicola 42:12 Oh. Well, that's, uh, that's hard, and, um, to do it in a healthy way, it's all about consistency and protocols. So, we have this one protocol which literally every time you think a bad thought or every time you're freaking out, you have to perform a drill. It might be a clicking drill, which anchors your thought, okay? Or it might be practicing a double inhale/exhale, like a physiological sigh to calm down the nervous system. But what I find is no matter how many, how many protocols you put in place for that moment...It's how strong are you and how strict are you to activate them during that stressful moment. Okay? So, I've got one player on the Miami Heat who I talk to every time he goes on- before he goes on the, um, actual court because he freaks out too much. Okay? And we- we do video calls. So...

Chris Williamson 42:58 And you're talking this guy through some cues?

Louisa Nicola 43:01 Yep. Yep.

Chris Williamson 43:01 What do you mean when you say either a clicking or a double-breath inhale to anchor their thoughts? What do you mean?

Louisa Nicola 43:07 Because when you're- when you're freaking out, you're anxious. Your mind is going at a million miles an hour. You're thinking so many things. So, if you just stop it, okay, and change direction. Literally, what do you have to do when you're going down a highway and you wanna change direction? You have to stop eventually. And once you stop, okay, you can stop by doing. So, clicking is like a- a form of- your brain is like, "Okay, I'm gonna click and as-" They're- they know through their protocol that in order to click, they have to anchor their thought into something else. Okay?

Chris Williamson 43:34 Okay. So, that's-

Louisa Nicola 43:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:34 ... kind of like noting in mindfulness meditation.

Louisa Nicola 43:38 Or an anchor. Yeah. It's a- it's- in sports psychology, there is one method where they get you to wear an elastic band around your wrist, and every time you have a panic, bas- you slap your wrist. That's very old school, though. So, that's-

Chris Williamson 43:50 Yeah. I've seen people doing that.

Louisa Nicola 43:52 So, that's one. But, uh, also, sometimes if I'm talking to someone, it's just about- they're making things up in their head, everything that can go wrong, okay. "I'm gonna go on the court. I'm gonna lose this. I'm not gonna get the ball. I'm not feeling good." So, it's just calming that down.

Chris Williamson 44:06 Mm. It's strange to think that players that are professional athletes and do it week in, week out still have the same sort of nervousness that a normal person would do before they go and give a- a talk or whatever. It is- it gives a different perspective when you see... A- a good example might be someone like Jake Paul, who is-

Louisa Nicola 44:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:26 ... very new into the sport of boxing, but-

Louisa Nicola 44:29 But putting him in the athletic background is-

Chris Williamson 44:31 I- I- I- I'm trying to be delicate here. But my point is that you have someone who isn't a trained athlete, who hasn't gone through years, decades, several iterations of walking out in front of a huge crowd. And yeah, I, uh, I don't know. I have a friend who's a- a very high-level DJ, and he, every single time before he steps behind the decks, throws up every single time, every single one of them.

Louisa Nicola 44:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:56 Because that's how nervous he is, because he wants to do well, and he-

Louisa Nicola 44:59 Yes.

Chris Williamson 45:00 ... he's playing in front of 10,000 people at Madison Square Garden or whatever it might be, and every single time before he goes out, he throws up.

Louisa Nicola 45:08 Wow. That's- yeah, no. Look, anybody, I- I say athlete, but I mean anybody performing at a high level. And he obviously is too.

Chris Williamson 45:18 Yeah, it's scary. What about research on heat and cold exposure? Is there any new cool stuff that you've seen recently on that?

Louisa Nicola 45:25 I'm actually about to get... I- I love cold immersion. I speak about it. I've got a podcast dedicated to it. I'm actually getting my first ice bath. It's gonna come here to Sydney 'cause I can't fit it in the New York City apartment. But, um, it's absolutely incredible. Okay. There's so much research around this to suggest that this is so important to do, to literally bring down the, um, the inflammatory biomarkers responsible for inflammation. That's the first thing, okay, immersing yourself in cold water. We know that there is a pathway now where you get into cold water and these- the pathway can go up to your brain and have a really good effect of decreasing neural inflammation. But one thing that I love about it is that once you get into cold water, within about five minutes, you get this massive release of not just cold shock proteins, but we get a massive release of norepinephrine. And that is that- it's both a hormone, okay, and a neurotransmitter. And as a neurotransmitter, it is responsible for focus and vigilance. So, if you wanna get that- if you- I think everyone every morning should be doing some form of cold therapy. I absolutely love it. I do it. You just gotta be really, really strict to not do it straight after training. Because once we do that, what we do is we s- we block the hormetic response of hypertrophy. So, when we go and work out, okay, and we're working out our muscles, we're strengthening them. We want them to create a bit of inflammation so they tear a bit and rebuild. That's what makes them stronger. And if we go and stop that rebuilding by blocking those pathways through cold, we're not gonna get the effects. So, cold immersion, love it. Everybody should get a- a cold bath.

Chris Williamson 47:07 Give me your optimal cold immersion

Chris Williamson 47:10 protocol across a week. What would you prescribe to someone?

Louisa Nicola 47:14 I don't do it for less than 12 minutes, and that's really hard depending on the temperature. So, um, far- I'm not gonna speak Fahrenheit 'cause it's not my first language. But in terms of, um... I do- I've got a- I've got a thermometer inside the bath and it drops to around 12 degrees, which is freezing.

Chris Williamson 47:30 Celsius, or?

Louisa Nicola 47:31 Yeah, Celsius.

Chris Williamson 47:32 Right. Okay. Um, and you're doing that for, you said, 12 min- no less than 12 minutes?

Louisa Nicola 47:37 No less than 12 minutes. Sometimes it goes down to nine, and that's enough.

Chris Williamson 47:40 How many- how many times a week?

Louisa Nicola 47:42 I try and do this five times a week.

Chris Williamson 47:44 Wow. So I saw Huberman had posted not long ago saying that the most recent research suggested, uh, nine minutes of cold exposure a week. And you're doing, what, 60? So, there seems-

Louisa Nicola 47:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:57 ... to be a big disparity between those two. What's the reason for choosing 12 and 5 times?

Louisa Nicola 48:02 Well, I mean, I- that's what- when I found this, you know, in the scientific literature, it said you gotta be doing this at least once a- once a day, really. It's like when people say, "Well, why can't I just get into a..." What's the co- the cryotherapy chamber? It's not gonna do you any-

Chris Williamson 48:16 Never done that.

Louisa Nicola 48:17 Oh, yeah. It's not gonna do you anything. It's just- I feel like it's gimmicky. And no one's gonna- no one has $90. I think it's, like, $90 a session to do this every day. I think at bare minimum, the science says, okay, bare minimum, three times a week. Okay? Bare minimum. I'm just crazy.

Chris Williamson 48:34 All right. Um-

Louisa Nicola 48:34 Just 23 filters having a coffee enema.

Chris Williamson 48:37 Have you had a look at contrast therapy? Um, Rhonda Patrick was talking about this. That's going from the heat to the cold.

Louisa Nicola 48:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:45 Um, is there any research about whether that's as effective, more effective, less effective?

Louisa Nicola 48:50 She actually says... I- I saw, um, she put this. She was on Joe Rogan, and she said that the sci... And she goes, it makes her feel good. So it can have a placebo effect, but the science isn't there to suggest that you're getting more benefits from doing cold shock, heat shock, cold shock, heat shock. So they're two different... uh, they are two different pathways. I prefer the cold, but I... You know, if I can one day get a- a sauna, infrared sauna, single person, then I would, because the effects that you get on the cardiovascular system are fantastic. You know? Imagine saying that you can get those effects, the- the heat shock proteins that are both neuroprotective and they help with the cardiovascular system. Imagine if you could do that for 20 minutes and mimic a one-hour or two-hour ride on the bike.

Chris Williamson 49:33 Yeah.

Louisa Nicola 49:33 I'd rather-

Chris Williamson 49:34 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 49:34 (laughs) ... I'd rather do the- the sauna, right?

Chris Williamson 49:37 Yeah. The, um-

Louisa Nicola 49:38 It probably

Narrator 49:38 calories.

Chris Williamson 49:38 There's a place in Austin called Kuya, which is a wellness recovery center, uh, ketamine psychotherapy and vitamin IVs and stuff, but it also has a... two cold tubs and a sauna, and they do contrast therapy, or they suggest contrast therapy. And it is... One of the good things about going from the sauna into the ice bath is that because you are so hot, when you get into the ice bath, the initial cold is easier to tolerate. And then as you stay in there over time, obviously the, um... What's it called? Agitator in the tank-

Louisa Nicola 50:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:11 ... is continuing to flow cold water in, but you are... It... The... It's the reverse of the frog in boiling water. It's the man in tiny swim shorts in the ice bath. But it gets easier to do it that way, and then I also find that getting into the sauna after that as well, you've got a little bit of time to bring yourself back up. So I think your tolerance on both increases. But yeah, I'd be interested to know what research ends up coming out around contrast therapy, about whether going from the extreme of heat to cold and back again actually is advantageous or not.

Louisa Nicola 50:45 Let's look at it, look at it clinically, and this is why I don't think it's the best thing. If you're going... If you're putting your body into a hypothermic, okay, and then a hyperthermic, hyper, hot, hypo, low, cold, I don't think that's good for the systems. I don't think doing that to your heart or your body would be beneficial. I think just dropping it down and staying there and just doing that, and maybe later on, a few hours later, getting into the opposite, um, effect would be better. I don't think going like this is necessary because I've actually tried it, and I gotta tell you, I was so dizzy, I almost... I felt like I was gonna faint.

Chris Williamson 51:20 What about heat exposure? What's your favorite protocol for that, or how much would you suggest that people do?

Louisa Nicola 51:28 So you can also do this by getting into a hot bath, which is something that I do with magnesium, okay, 'cause I don't have a- a sauna. Um, but it-

Chris Williamson 51:36 Hang on, magnesium in the bath?

Louisa Nicola 51:38 Yeah, magnesium salt.

Chris Williamson 51:40 Okay. Why?

Louisa Nicola 51:42 Calms my body down, makes me very, very sleepy. You're literally soaking in the magnesium through the largest organ in the body, which is the skin. Um, and heat makes you sleepy anyway, so it prepares you for bed. That's another protocol people should try. But, um, I think the... uh, I think the protocol is to get the benefits for the cardiovascular system of the heat shock proteins, I think you've got to stay in there around 20 minutes, 23 minutes.

Chris Williamson 52:07 Okay. Um...

Louisa Nicola 52:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:09 I've definitely noticed when you go into a sauna, if you're in there for about 10 to 15 minutes, it begins to get difficult, and then if you-

Louisa Nicola 52:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:18 ... stay in for a little longer, there's a- a tingly sensation. It's-

Louisa Nicola 52:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:23 Is that the heat shock proteins? Is that the feedback of the heat shock proteins being released? Or is there any way that you know when you've got to that? Because obviously, you can be in a sauna for 20 minutes or 23 minutes or 25 minutes, but presumably, if it was 20 degrees hotter, you would have hit that point after 15 minutes or whatever it is. So is there a way that people can tell when they've been in for long enough?

Louisa Nicola 52:44 I'll tell you something that's really fascinating, okay? There's... Have you heard of hormesis?

Chris Williamson 52:48 Yes.

Louisa Nicola 52:50 So it's pretty much, um, when your body has to survive. So survival of the fittest, okay? So when you feel at that moment where you're about to die, okay?

Chris Williamson 53:00 (laughs)

Louisa Nicola 53:01 That's when the effect comes in, and that's the hormetic response. So if you look at longevity studies, if you look at centenarians, people who live to 100, it's because they've- they've gotten into that state of whatever doesn't... There we go, that's it. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's what hormesis is. So if you can be doing this, that's why heat shock proteins and why cold shock proteins exist, to put us in that survival mode, okay? So it's at that point. So if you... That's why I don't really believe in cold showers to mimic this. People are like, "Well, I do cold therapy, I do cold showers." It's like, but that's just a cold shower. That's not shocking your body to that survival mode, right?

Chris Williamson 53:37 There's a big difference between immersing yourself for five minutes and even doing a- a cold shower, because it never... it never just sinks in through your skin for as long, right? There's not as much time that your body is being in contact with cold temperatures. You get out of the ice bath, and you're shivering sometimes if you've been in for long enough.

Louisa Nicola 54:00 Oh, yeah, and that shivering is a great response, okay? That's that- that non-shivering thermogenesis or the shivering actually activates brown fat or brown adipose tissue.

Chris Williamson 54:10 Am I right in thinking that you're supposed to have wrists and clavicle under as well for something to do with brown tissue?

Louisa Nicola 54:17 Yeah. It's literally neck down.

Chris Williamson 54:20 Okay. Is that just-

Louisa Nicola 54:21 So a lot of that

Narrator 54:21 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:21 ... to immerse the most of you, or is there something special about those areas?

Louisa Nicola 54:25 No, that's just to get the most of the, uh, the immersion possible. Sometimes I put my feet out the end of the bath, but...

Chris Williamson 54:33 What about psychedelics and LSD for enhancing sport performance? Didn't you look at something to do with this?

Louisa Nicola 54:40 I did. I wrote a... I wrote a Substack. So I have a- a weekly newsletter that goes out, and we tapped into this because I spoke to Dave Robin, and he's, um... he's at the forefront. He's a psychiatrist. He's at the forefront of psychedelic me- medicine. And look-I think it's going to be great, not for sports performance. I think it's gonna be great for the treatment of depression. And I'm all, I'm all for it. I think it's, um, I think it's amazing. I'm excited to see how it can be done clinically, um, with a trained professional, but only in that area. I don't know if I, I would think that there's any correlation, maybe this is just me, um, correlation yet with sporting performance.

Chris Williamson 55:17 You don't think players playing off their face, imagining bright green footballs flying towards them and stuff like that, and the dragon in the sky, you don't think that's performance-enhancing?

Louisa Nicola 55:27 Well, I wrote about this famous, I forget what his name is, I forget what year, but he had his best hit, um, he was a baseballer, his best hit done on LSD.

Chris Williamson 55:37 No way.

Louisa Nicola 55:38 Yeah. Yeah. I've got it on my Substack. I- I'll send it to you. But it's, um, it's fascinating research, and that could just be because maybe he was calmer and he was just, you know... Uh, apparently, it, you know, when you're dosing or microdosing with psychedelics, whichever one, maybe it's LSD or psilocybin, you are tapping into that creativity mode. Okay? So maybe that could have had an effect on it.

Chris Williamson 56:02 Well, there are definitely connecting synapses that don't usually, right? Different areas of the brain that aren't usually communicating with each other is enabled when the default mode network gets switched off. Um, it does surprise me that someone's able to do swing anything at anything if they're on LSD, but...

Louisa Nicola 56:19 Mm. Well, it depends on dosage as well.

Chris Williamson 56:23 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True. If it's, whatever, what's it? Sub-awareness, below the threshold of awareness, whatever it is.

Louisa Nicola 56:31 Well, you can have, you can tap into the area that's gonna be clinically benef- benefit- beneficial for you, or you can tap into that one that makes people jump off a, off a roof, right?

Chris Williamson 56:41 Get that one. Get the second one.

Louisa Nicola 56:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 56:43 That's the one that we want.

Louisa Nicola 56:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:44 What was the... I heard you talking about... So, we, we've spoken about throwing a tennis ball at a wall. What was the fact... Something to do with standing on your left foot and throwing with your right? What was that?

Louisa Nicola 56:55 Yeah. So, left brain and right brain, we've got two hemispheres, okay? They're connected by a bridge. Left part of the brain is responsible for the right part of the body, right side of the body. R- right side of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body. It's like this X, it's a contralateral. It's how we see as well. I love the fact that you can be working on the left brain, okay? Your brain is having to think and see, but you're actually producing the movement with your right hand. So, we do a lot of things where I'll get them to lift their leg up, their left leg up, so they're standing on their right leg, and they're throwing the ball to the wall with their right hand. Also, one thing that I get all my athletes to do at some point is wear an eye patch, literally. If you go to the, the pharmacy and you get an eye patch for if you've got an eye infection, put that on, and it blocks out one part of their eye or it blocks out the vision of their eye. So, this, that means if you're gonna block out the right eye, it means the left eye is gonna get stronger 'cause it's only got one, one eye to see, so it's gonna have to scan everything.

Chris Williamson 57:54 So, it's progressive overload for your eye. Are you familiar with slack block? Do you know what a slack block is?

Louisa Nicola 58:00 No. No, I was gonna say, are they the, the goggles?

Chris Williamson 58:03 No. So, you know what a slack line is, right? Which is kind of like a tightrope thing-

Louisa Nicola 58:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:08 ... that you tie between trees, and hippies do it in LA. So, the slack block (laughs) is a small, around about two feet long-

Louisa Nicola 58:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:16 ... and it's a kind of like a skateboard deck that's about the width of a foot, and it sits on a pyramid of foam.

Louisa Nicola 58:27 Yes.

Chris Williamson 58:27 You have seen these?

Louisa Nicola 58:29 Yeah, I have seen these. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:30 Yeah, they're dope. They're so good.

Louisa Nicola 58:31 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 58:32 Yeah. Really, really good.

Louisa Nicola 58:34 And that's more so balancing, right?

Chris Williamson 58:34 Correct. Yeah. So, what I was doing, I ruptured my Achilles about 18 months ago, and one of the things that I was advised to do was any sort of standing on one leg whilst throwing a tennis ball at the wall. So, the reason to do that is that it causes you to need to readjust constantly, you know? The ball goes to the wall, you gotta readjust it, catch it again, gotta readjust, um, and I worked up to doing it on the slack block. And what you do is you take columns of foam out, so you can imagine that there's columns cut through it, and as you take more of them out, there's less structure below the skateboard deck, which means that it becomes more and more, uh, difficult to keep your balance on. And over time, you can work... So, it's in the kitchen, so a lot of the time I'll go in and one of the boys will be stood on it, like, trying to chop stuff. I'm like, "This is a recipe for disaster." But, um, doing that whilst throwing a ball at the wall, the progression that you see in terms of your balance, your, uh, judgment, was really, really high.

Louisa Nicola 59:29 Mm. Do you know what's interesting? They say that you can't have proper brain health without having good balance. Now, the, there's a little area underneath the brain, it's separate from the brain, but it's, it's called the cerebellum. Literally means in Latin, um, mini brain. Looks like a mini brain, and that's the area that's responsible for posture and balance. So, you can literally train that area of the brain by standing on one leg or by standing on a balance board or by standing on a, whatever you're doing, and that's another thing that we do. But one thing I, you know, I mentioned earlier was these strobe goggles. So, we have these goggles, right, and they've, imagine just one, one part of the, the, the right side, and it's cut into four, it's cut in quadrants. So, I can program it for my athletes to see all three quadrants and then block out the upper right. So-

Chris Williamson 1:00:20 And what does that do? Why, why, why, why do they need that?

Louisa Nicola 1:00:23 Well, we're seeing the four quadrants, so that means that they're gonna s- be strengthening all of the areas in the eye except for the one blacked out, okay? To overcompensate.

Chris Williamson 1:00:32 Where can people go if they want to check out your Substack and follow more of this stuff that you do online?

Louisa Nicola 1:00:38 Uh, you can find me on Instagram, Luisa Nicola, or the_diamond_boss is my handle, or, um, if you really wanna get more information on brain health, upgrading brain performance, you can go to our Substack, which is neuroathletics.substack.com.

Chris Williamson 1:00:52 Sweet. We made it.

Louisa Nicola 1:00:54 Y-

Chris Williamson 1:00:54 Thank you, Luisa.

Louisa Nicola 1:00:55 ... you, Chris.

Chris Williamson 1:00:56 What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.