Digital Social Hour

Your Brain Was Never Designed for Modern Life | Dr. Patrick Porter | DSH #1850

34 min
Mar 8, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Dr. Patrick Porter discusses how the modern brain requires intentional training to manage stress, optimize performance, and prevent cognitive decline. He covers practical strategies including sensory motor rhythm training, strategic hydration, nutrition, movement, and sleep optimization, while introducing his BrainTap technology and upcoming brain camp retreat center.

Insights
  • Stress elimination is counterproductive; the goal is building resilience and stress management capacity like athletes train for peak performance
  • The brain performs more neurological work during sleep than waking hours, processing information and solving problems through the glial lymphatic system
  • A 20-minute midday brain optimization session can increase productivity by 26% and improve sleep quality by 73% without directly targeting sleep
  • Epigenetic switches on genes can be activated through thoughts, activities, and external factors, meaning genetic expression is malleable and not fixed
  • Morning hydration and specific brainwave training (SMR) are foundational prerequisites before any other health optimization or biohacking interventions
Trends
Neuroscience-backed workplace wellness programs targeting burnout prevention through midday cognitive resetsEpigenetics and gene expression optimization becoming mainstream health optimization focus beyond traditional geneticsIntegration of ancient wellness practices (meditation, breathwork, communal gathering) with modern neurotechnologyShift from symptom elimination to resilience-building and nervous system optimization in health coachingPersonalized brain training and biohacking retreats emerging as premium wellness offerings for high-performersLight therapy and infrared technology adoption for cellular energy production and ATP optimizationPessimism-optimism mindset as measurable biomarker affecting photon production and nervous system regulationSleep quality metrics (deep sleep, REM) prioritized over sleep duration in performance optimizationMovement and muscle preservation reframed as neurological health strategy, not just physical fitnessTechnology-induced cognitive decline (digital dementia) recognition as health concern requiring intervention
Topics
Brainwave Frequency Optimization (SMR, Alpha, Theta, Gamma, Delta)Stress Resilience Building vs. Stress EliminationGlial Lymphatic System and Sleep-Based Brain DetoxificationEpigenetics and Gene Expression SwitchingSensory Motor Rhythm TrainingMidday Cognitive Reset ProtocolsHydration and Brain HealthOlive Oil and Alzheimer's PreventionMovement and BDNF ProductionCircadian Rhythm OptimizationMirror Neurons and Environmental SynchronizationNitric Oxide and VasodilationDigital Dementia and Technology EffectsPsychological Breathing TechniquesSleep Architecture and Deep Sleep Improvement
Companies
Google
Participated in BrainTap productivity study with employees to measure impact on burnout prevention and work output
Microsoft
Collaborated with Dr. Porter on BrainTap experiment with programmers to test midday cognitive reset effectiveness
MIT
Conducted research on human thought transmission and epigenetic gene switching mechanisms discussed in episode
American Scientific
Published May 2015 article on glial lymphatic system discovery, the brain's cleaning system activated during deep sleep
People
Dr. Patrick Porter
Neuroscientist and BrainTap founder discussing brain optimization, stress resilience, and biohacking methodologies
Dr. Laura Leyva
Biohacking expert who introduced Dr. Porter to vision body suit technology and helped him lose 50 pounds
Sean Kelly
Digital Social Hour podcast host conducting interview with Dr. Porter on brain training and modern lifestyle challenges
Rashika Sakrishi
Co-author of Brain Fitness Blueprint; led BrainTap productivity study at Google with Dr. Porter
Dr. Amen
Referenced as collaborator with Dr. Credo on sleep optimization program called Sleep Like a Champion
Dr. Credo
Sleep specialist working with Dr. Porter on Sleep Like a Champion program for optimizing sleep architecture
Quotes
"Our brain was not designed for the life we're living today. We need to train our brain just like an athlete would train its body for a sport."
Dr. Patrick Porter
"You don't want to eliminate stress. That only happens one time in your life. They call it death."
Dr. Patrick Porter
"If you win the morning, you're going to win the day."
Dr. Patrick Porter
"A 20-minute session of brain tap is equivalent to a four-hour nap."
Dr. Patrick Porter
"You never step into the same river twice. What they were saying was, you never step into the same body twice."
Dr. Patrick Porter
Full Transcript
I know you have a lot of data on the brain. Have you found anything that eliminates stress? We don't eliminate stress. Everybody always asks me that, Dr. Porter, how can you get rid of all my stress? You don't want that. That only happens one time in your life. They call it death. Think of stress as like a pro athlete doesn't look for an easier workout. They go, can you give me an easier workout so I can get my big paycheck? No. They go, what can I do to challenge my body physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, push it to its limits? When I'm there on game day, I have high peak performance moments. Now this morning when you woke up, I'm sure you said, wow I got a race today right you said man I'm getting ready for the race it's called the human race most people don't know they get up in the morning to get there in the hundred yard dash the guns up they go what the hell what's this hundred yard dash I didn't sign up for this ago no you're in the human race you never trained for it our brain was not designed for the life we're living today we need to train our brain just like an athlete would train its body for a sport we need to train our brain for our life and most people don't do that so in the morning we need to wake up our brain using something called SMR sensory motor rhythm and this is a brainwave that has to do with the distributor system. So exercise is really important. So if you can do yoga, Tai Chi, dance, even just get up and move your body. Hi guys, returning guest, Dr. Patrick Porter. We are here at A4M talking about brain top. What's new with you, man? You're down 50 pounds. Yeah. I met up with some pretty incredible people like the queen of biohacking, Dr. Laura Leyva. She introduced me to things like the vision body suit. You know, when you exercise your body, you get that BDNF, the, we call it miracle growth for the brain. So imagine you're working out, but now you're not just recruiting 30% of your muscles doing a regular workout. It's 90 to 95% of the muscles are being recruited. It made a big difference. And, you know, I travel a lot, speak a lot. So now I can just pack it in my luggage. And if I don't have time to work out, I just put it on, do the electrical stem and I can do my emails. I'm doing a workout. But usually I, usually I will do a workout at the same time. Yeah, because you had the brain on lock, but your body was 50 pounds heavier the last time I saw you. Yes. Yeah. If you go back and look at the last video, you go, who's that fat guy? It's good to see you both now, though. Yeah. Good physical body and good. Yeah, I feel better. Before Dr. Leiva started working on me, my shoulder was locked. I couldn't even do a push-up. Now I can do 30 push-ups. It was locked? Yeah, I had a shoulder surgery. Oh, okay. And I thought that I could never heal it, but it really was a structural problem. So, I mean, when you think about the mechanics of the body, I'm not familiar with that. I was just talking about the brain. My brain was telling me I couldn't move my arm. But as soon as you release those muscles, ligaments, and tendons, and you get the body to actually start healing itself, magic happens. Yeah, that's cool. And so movement, you know, the third pillar, of course, there's you can't outthink a bad diet. We talked about that before. You have to have movement, and that's where Dr. Leva comes in. And then you have to have brain fitness. And so what I was doing is I was eating really well. I haven't really changed my eating. It's just, I'm now recruiting more muscle. You know, as, as we get better looking and more intelligent with age, if something happens to our body, right, it starts to convert that muscle to fat. But I want to, I'm, I'm, we're going the opposite way. Most people don't realize it. You can never start early enough to keep your muscle because every muscle is like a chemical factory. It's feeding those neurotransmitters and those hormones and everything your body needs to make you feel good and happy. You know, if you're sitting on the couch eating Lay's potato chips and drinking Cokes and you're saying, poor me, then your brain's going to downregulate and you're going to spiral out of control and have depression, anxiety, then dementia and Alzheimer's. And then you're going to say, why God, why did this happen to me? Well, it happened through you, not to you. You were the orchestrator. So this last year I decided, hey, I'm only 64 years old. I'm a pretty young guy. So hey, I got to get going. I got great kids. I want to be around playing. And I have my, I don't know if I talked about it last year, but I bought 88 acres that I'm converting into a healing retreat center where people like Dr. Lauren will come out and do one week retreats. We're calling it brain camp. So imagine you come in and we could measure every parameter of the brain from EEG to live cell analysis, to blood flow analysis, to VO2 max. We have about 12 different biomarkers with the equipment. we take them through the testing and then we have about four four hundred thousand dollars worth of biohacking equipment we have people go through and then but instead of it being a camp like you go and do archery and swimming and kayaking you're doing biohacking all day long and then we work on the mindset because we got to get people to be thinking this is the best time to be alive there's no better time i mean right in on our pockets right now we have any piece of music we want to listen to and music can is like a like a radio station in the past when i was growing up you had buttons for the radio stations in your town. Now we have infinite number, like this podcast. I mean, you're one of millions of people out there. People can tune into what they want to hear, how they want to hear it. Music can change their frequency, raise their energy, and get their brain functioning better. Yeah, people don't realize how important the music they listen to is, right? Right. Like, it's super important. Yeah, they actually, there was one study that when Fox had me on a few weeks ago doing some, because of Christmas music actually, is a downer for the Can't focus, struggling to sleep, or feeling wired? This balances your brain and body fast. A cutting-edge EEG study found something phenomenal with quantum upgrade. Stress-related brainwave activity dropped by 80%. Calming alpha- We talk a lot on this show about taking risks and trying to get ahead, but let's be real, the world feels shaky right now. AI's changing jobs, markets are all over the place, nothing feels guaranteed, and at some point you realize no one's coming to save you. You've got to protect yourself, and one thing people forget about is life insurance. If you're new to it, you're not alone. That's why I checked out SelectQuote. They've been around for over 40 years and helped more than 2 million Americans find coverage that actually fits their life and budget. They compare policies from top-rated insurance companies and do the work for you for free. You can even get same-day coverage up to $2 million with no medical exam. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% at selectquote.com.dsh. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash dsh today to get started at selectquote.com slash dsh. In the limbic system increased over 13x and HRV improved big time. That's just the start. Quantum Upgrade is a 24-7 quantum energy streaming service that boosts your energy, focus, recovery, and sleep with no device needed. I personally use this myself and it's also recommended by top athletes, leading biohackers, and functional medicine practitioners. It can neutralize the harmful effects of EMFs, increase ATP production by up to 29%, and improve cell recovery, blood health, and circulation within minutes. Yes, double blind studies confirm it. And with Quantum Upgrade, you don't have to fight against technology, you could thrive with it. Get your 15-day free trial, no credit card required. Use the code DSH. Go to quantumupgrade.io and experience the upgrade for yourself. Quantumupgrade.io. Oh, is it? Yeah, because they use the wrong beat frequency. Wow. And it actually, that's why there's so much depression and anxiety during listening to Christmas music. It's ironic, right? Like Alvin and the Chipmunks. It's like the number one worst song to listen to. Is it? Most people, they either love it or they hate it. It's irritating. I don't like that song. Yeah, because what it does is it keeps you in a brainwave state called high beta. Anything over 25 to 30 hertz, your brain's going to be agitated. Now, if it can get above 40, you're now in a kind of a zen state, that gamma state. That's different, but that's why there's like in all ancient traditions, they talk about the dark night of the soul. You've got to get through that anxiety, that stress, that depression. Everybody goes through it, but when you pop out on the other side and you're in high theta, now you're creating GABA. GABA is the precursor to DMT. Whoa. Your brain produces that. Every cell of your body has that molecule in it right now. So when we talk about the most powerful pharmacy on earth, it's not Walgreens or Walmart or whatever. It's the human brain, but we have to activate it. So physical fitness is one way to activate it. Nutrition, of course, is one way. Now we're doing stem cells. We're doing all these other ways that we can trigger the body. Here at A4M, of course, we're learning so many things. They're doing peptides that activate these channels. But once, what I always tell people is you can't have a pill without a skill. So brain tap is integrating that skill part. So imagine that you're trying to lose weight and you're taking a pill or you're doing an injection, a GLP-1 or whatever. Well, after a while, you're either going to do GLP-1 for the rest of your life and subject yourself to all the downsides of that. There's a lot of downsides. But the reality is if you're in trouble, you're 100 pounds overweight, you need something to get you going and it works for you, great. But eventually you want your body to be able to do it for itself. So while you're doing it at the same time, why not integrate it with some kind of brain fitness? Get your brain operating in the right brainwave frequencies so that you can make the neurotransmitters, make the hormones, do the things you need to do to instruct the brain and the body to work together and create magic. I know you have a lot of data on the brain. Have you found anything that eliminates stress? Well, we don't eliminate stress. One thing is, you know, everybody always asks me that, Dr. Porter, how can you get rid of all my stress? You don't want that. That only happens one time in your life. They call it death So think of stress as like a pro athlete doesn look for an easier workout They go can you give me an easier workout so I can get my big paycheck No They go what can I do to challenge my body physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually to push it to its limits so that when I'm there on game day, I have high peak performance moments. Now this morning when you woke up, I'm sure you said, wow, I got a race today, right? You said, man, I'm getting ready for the race. It's called the human race. Most people don't know. They get up in the morning, they're in the 100-yard dash, the gun's up, they go, what the hell? What's this 100-yard dash? I didn't sign up for this. They go, no, you're in the human race. You never trained for it. Our brain was not designed for the life we're living today. We need to train our brain just like an athlete would train its body for a sport. We need to train our brain for our life. And most people don't do that. So in the morning, we need to wake up our brain using something called SMR, sensory motor rhythms. And this is a brainwave that has to do with the distributor system. So exercise is really important. So if you can do yoga, Tai Chi, dance, even just get up and move your body. Most people are so unaccustomed to moving their body, even touching their body. There's so many taboos. This body needs touch and it needs movement. Movement is life. You know, if you're not moving the body, then you're not making BDNF. And when you're sitting, they actually everything is now compared to cigarettes right yeah so so to what when i was when i was first in business in the 1970s and 80s when when my dad and i we had a stop smoking clinic doctors were prescribing cigarettes back then wow so imagine that out there doctors were actually prescribing cigarettes to people who were stressed out that's crazy so now today you would never do doctors were prescribing coca-cola and 7-up to to infants back in the 30s for what because they were paid to do it because you want your kids to be happy give them coca-cola that's there's ads that say that you know so i mean just because a doctor says it doesn't mean it's true we need to look at our own life experience so in the morning we need to upregulate our nervous system get it going what we know most is the best thing you can do for your body in the morning is hydrate your body your body when you were sleeping by the way you did more neurological work than you're doing right now. Really? While you sleep, you do more neurological work than you do when you're awake. So all night long, your brain is processing all the information you were exposed to, all the conversations you had, all the interactions, all the hopes and dreams, all the daydreams. We talk a lot on this show about taking risks and trying to get ahead. But let's be real, the world feels shaky right now. AI is changing jobs. Markets are all over the place. Nothing feels guaranteed. And at some point, you realize no one's coming to save you. You've got to protect yourself and one thing people forget about is life insurance. If you're new to it, you're not alone. That's why I checked out SelectQuote. They've been around for over 40 years and helped more than 2 million Americans find coverage that actually fits their life and budget. They compare policies from top-rated insurance companies and do the work for you for free. You can even get same-day coverage up to $2 million with no medical exam. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% at SelectQuote.com slash dsh. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash dsh today to get started at selectquote.com slash dsh. Everything you wanted to accomplish, it's putting together a plan for you. But most people just leave it up to the unconscious. And they wake up and they go, holy shit, what am I supposed to do? They turn on the news. Oh, this is how I'm supposed to feel today. And by the way, listeners, if you're too happy, there is a solution for that. If you're really super happy right now and you just can't, you're beside yourself, you're so happy, just go to the TV set, turn on CNN. And when you turn on CNN, in five minutes, you'll be depressed, anxious, and stressed out because they've searched the whole world. Remember, they searched the whole world to get you one hour of bad news every night. There's so much good news in the world. We need to start focusing on the good in the world. And one thing we found out since we last met was MIT did a study that showed the human thought, when you think a thought, they've actually traced it to 10,000 miles from you. And they said it goes into a web of information like the internet. Now, what is MIT doing? This sounds like metaphysics. It sounds like some kind of magical, what the hell's happening here? But science is now proving out what the ancient rishis knew all along, that we live in a sea of consciousness that we're interacting. Your thoughts might not be your thoughts. Still taking your pre-workout after you get to the gym? You're already late. What if your pre-workout actually worked with your body? Are you tired of artificial energy drinks? Meet NO Beats, a beet-based nitric oxide booster that supports your body's natural nitric oxide production for increased blood flow, mitochondrial ATP energy, and endurance naturally. N101 nitric oxide lozenges is a smarter way to fuel your workout. Just dissolve it in your mouth and it starts working before your first rep. No mixing, no jitters, no crash. More nitric oxide means better blood flow, stronger pumps and sustained energy without caffeine overload. Plus it supports your cardiovascular and cognitive health too. You can support your body's nitric oxide production daily and feel the difference with N101. Just mix one packet with a little water and take it as a shot 10 to 20 minutes before training. Pop a lozenge 10 to 15 minutes pre-workout and feel the difference, train smarter with N101 at N101.com. We're sharing these thoughts. That's why when Bannister broke the four-minute mile, the next year, high school students were breaking the four-minute mile. How did that happen? Because the barrier, our brain, that belief barrier was gone. If I was to take you back in time right now to 2015 and you're in medical school, you're going through all your curriculum and they're talking about your physiology. There's a part of the physiology called the lymphatic system. This is the garbage man of the system. Remember, there's four things that reasons you have problems in your brain today. Thoughts, traumas, toxins, and technology. So when you think about the toxins, how do you get them out of there? The problem isn't that we don't have good nutrients. The problem is you can't paint a house while it's burning. So with all the inflammation, everything going on, so you've got to downregulate. But back in 2015, there was a doctor that was doing a sleep study. and while he was doing this sleep study, he realized there was a new system of the body. Think of it like X-Men. This system activates only during level four sleep called the glial lymphatic system. It's the brain's cleaning system. Actually, in American Scientific in May 2015, they actually show, there's an article there that says the garbage man of the system. If you do not get deep sleep, so there's two things, listeners, two things you need to do before you do any biohack, any health optimization, any longevity treatment, because they're never going to work if you don't solve these two problems. First, stress resilience. Not get rid of stress. How do we build more resilience? You have a 100 billion NeuroBet processor. Every one of those neurons is more powerful than a Cray computer. So imagine that. You have 100 billion of them. When you were born, you were 18.1 volts. You were alive. Your brain was fully activated. You had neuroplasticity, who knows what. You could stay up all night long, get up and play all day long, and you didn't get tired at all. But then as we age, what happens is about 21 to 25 years old, that brain starts to modulate about 10.1 volts. And then it stays that way. It should stay that way until we die. Do you know any ancient culture that keeps all the wisdom of the tribe with the youngsters? You know, like when you hear about ancient traditions, go, all the wisdoms with who? the elders oh yeah so what are we doing wrong with our elders we're putting our elders into community homes we're disassociating them all the wisdom of our tribe is being disassociated we need to somehow get used to be if you and i were in a tribe together we'd go out hunting and gathering and then we'd meet at the communal fire at night now that communal fire was a biohack they didn't know it but that fire is crackling and burning at 10 hertz frequency you know what hertz is? Alpha. The body mirrors that. Every cell of your body has a mirror neuron. So these mirror neurons are now matching the fire's intensity. So then it gets in rhythm and cadence like metronomes. If you go on the internet to YouTube and put in synchronizing metronomes, you'll see a guy starts one metronome and 200 metronomes. Within three minutes, they're all synchronized. The cells of your body do the same thing with everything. I know we don't have a lot of time, but what we're talking about here is that when you get in sync with your environment, so in ancient times, what they would do, they'd go to the fire. What would they do? They would talk about their day. Hey, there's berries over here. There's buffalo over here. There's whatever. There's a tribe over here that looks a little weird. We don't want to be around. You know, whatever's going on, but they downloaded the wisdom of the tribe. So everybody knew about it. And then as the logs burned, they didn't realize what was happening. Not just the logs, but you as a person, you are emitting infrared light. Like all the, out here in the hall, we have all these light generating systems like brain tap and their assage and all these people, they have all these different light devices. You are a light machine. They call it the electron transport chain for a reason. The electron transport chain, that's the base system of the body. It's energy, it's light, which means that we are light beings and we are energy beings. So what this light does, It comes into the cell the Krebs cycle starts again starts to create ATP which then produces oxygen and creates energy nitric oxide everything we need for vasodilation blood flow, circulation, because the problem most people have is inflammation because they have all this plaquing because there's so much inflammation. We talk a lot on this show about taking risks and trying to get ahead, but let's be real, the world feels shaky right now. AI's changing jobs, markets are all over the place, nothing feels guaranteed, and at some point you realize no one's coming to save you. You've got to protect yourself. And one thing people forget about is life insurance. If you're new to it, you're not alone. That's why I checked out SelectQuote. They've been around for over 40 years and helped more than 2 million Americans find coverage that actually fits their life and budget. They compare policies from top-rated insurance companies and do the work for you for free. You can even get same-day coverage up to $2 million with no medical exam. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% at selectquote.com slash dsh. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash dsh today to get started at selectquote.com slash dsh. ...going on, nutrients can't get to the cells. So we've got to clear that out. Like I said, you've got to plan for that. So in the morning, you get up, you do the SMR training. If you don't do brain tap, then what I recommend is you do psychological breathing. And it's very easy. everyone out there has heard this before. You've been with a family member, a friend, and they get fed up and then they finally go, you know, they just let out a breath. They go, what's that big sigh about, John? And you go, oh, what it was, was your nervous system got so built up. You just had to go, well, you can do that on your own. It's actually a breath technique. You just breathe in. And if you do that in the privacy of your own home or bathroom, so your family doesn't think you're going nuts. You know, if you do that for a minute or two, you will regulate your nervous system. You will create dopamine, neuropronephrine, cortisol, everything you need in the morning to kickstart your journey. That's how you get your brain ready. A cup of coffee is not the answer. A cup of coffee starts at 10 o'clock or two hours after awakening. So when you think about the first two hours should be hydration, mineral water, and at least one tall glass of water, if not two. Remember your brain shrunk three quarters of an inch while you slap. Wow. The minute you drink that cup of coffee, it's a diuretic. You've just dehydrated your body. There's a really good book called Your Body's Many Cries for Water. In most ailments, the first thing when somebody says, what's going on? I said, how much water are you drinking? Oh, I drink coffee all day long. No, how much water do you drink? Every cup of coffee, if you drink 12 ounces of coffee, that's fine. You better drink 36 ounces of water to wash that out. Damn, three to one. yeah because you just lost that so it's okay to drink it but you just got to know you got to drink a lot more water and and so and then during the day what I always tell people when you eliminate replenish so you eliminate drink a glass of water that's your reminder and if you can get in that cycle what will happen is people go well then I'm going to the bathroom all the time that's the way it's supposed to work and then about eight o'clock at night you stop drinking water because your body doesn't need water while you sleep. It needs to be hydrated to sleep because your brain is a hydro engine. It also needs essential fats. So one tip that we've been talking about, a study that was done with olive oil, what I tell people is think about your salads, and everybody should at least have a salad one meal a day or some kind of greens or some green drink or something because that's good for our bodies. But instead of having salad dressing, if you look at that salad dressing, it's all sugar. Yeah. It's terrible. Cetal oils too. Yeah. Yeah. So get rid of those. Get a good bottle of olive oil from California or from Italy. Make sure not all of them are from Italy. Sometimes they just drive by Italy and they put made in Italy on them. But the California growers, they have really great olive oil. One tablespoon of olive oil a day, your risk of Alzheimer's and dementia went down to 40%. Jeez. So if you put that on your salads and you put Italian seasoning and salt and pepper. I don't really chase trends anymore. I just want clothes that work, feel good, and last. I stopped buying a lot of clothes and started buying better ones. Stuff that fits right, holds up, and I actually wear. That's why I've been going with Quince. They've got basics I actually use, organic cotton sweaters, queen colos, lightweight jackets, stuff that holds up to daily wear and still looks good. Quality's solid and everything's built to last. What makes Quince different is how they do it. They work directly with top factories, cut out the middleman, and you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing. and they only partner with factories that meet high standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash dsh for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.com slash dsh. Now available in Canada too. Free shipping and 365 day returns to quince.com slash TSA. Now you've got your own salad dressing. It's very inexpensive and you're feeding your brain and you have 40% less chance of having a dementia or Alzheimer's. I mean, so start that today because your body needs fats. Now there's a lot of other things we could go on and on. We could have a whole show just about the food you need for your brain, but our brain is not designed for this lifestyle. We were designed to have stress maybe three to four times a week. Maybe the tiger would come around the corner and scare us. We'd might be almost fall off a cliff once in a while, but we have it all the time because of technology. That's the fourth T. So technology can be good and bad. You know, if you're sitting around just looking at your screen all day long, that's not going to be good for your body, your nervous system, your spine, because most people, they actually, if you took somebody looking and walking with their phone and you took a dementia patient walking, they look the same. It's digital dementia. They have the same physiology. Just like if I was to ask the listeners out there, if I was a Hollywood producer and I said, Sean, I'm looking for somebody who can play the role of a depressed person. How would you convince me you were depressed? What would be the physiological cues you would give me? Be hunched over. Yeah. Hunched over, shallow. You might even use a little mantra like poor me. A lot of people do that and they mumble it to themselves in that that negative emotion. Now, if you roll your shoulders back, roll your chin upward, man, you just won the lottery and you're breathing deeply. You can't feel depressed. You can't feel excited and exhilarated. I always tell people, you should feel like you're a race car driver on the edge of your seat. That this is, man, you're, you got the front row seat to the show of your life. Your life is important. Whatever you're doing today. Remember you, you signed up to run this race. you just didn't train for it we've got to train that brain first thing in the morning then in the middle of the day you probably noticed in the middle of the day about two o'clock and the listeners probably have too that you get this psychological low you just feel like hey what's going on what's happening that's normal you know a hundred years ago nobody worked past two o'clock wow farmers weren't out in the field at two o'clock aborigines aren't running around at two o'clock in the serengeti there's no lions running around chasing zebras at two o'clock everybody's taking a nap. But because we're Americans and we want it now, we want it fast, and we think doing, doing, doing is going to make it better. But people have spent all of their time, energy, and effort to make their money. And now they got to spend all their money to get their health back. If they could just take 20 minutes. And we did this at Google and Microsoft. My co-author with the Brain Fitness Blueprint, Rashika Sakrishi, was at Google. So we did an experiment actually with Googlers and Microsoft programmers. And they wanted to know, how could we stop them from having burnout? And I said, just have them do a brain tap session at two in the afternoon. They said, I can't take 20 minutes off in the afternoon. I'm busy. You know, they get paid by the keystroke. I said, give me two weeks and I guarantee you will never go back to not taking that break. What we found was if they took that 20 minute break with brain tap in the middle of the day, because you have a psychological low, your temperature drops two degrees. If you're neurologically out of balance, it's going to drop lower and you're going to think you have low blood sugar. It's not low blood sugar, all the stress that happened, your liver pumped out sugar into your bloodstream, your insulin was released, the fat storage hormone, put all that sugar into the adipose tissue, locked it away called insulin resistance. Now, when you're hungry, there's no sugar for the body because when you were stressed, you didn't do anything. You were sitting there looking at your... We talk a lot on this show about taking risks and trying to get ahead, but let's be real, the world feels shaky right now. AI's changing jobs, markets are all over the place, nothing feels guaranteed, and at some point you realize no one's coming to save you. You've got to protect yourself, and one thing people forget about is life insurance. If you're new to it, you're not alone. That's why I checked out SelectQuote. They've been around for over 40 years and helped more than 2 million Americans find coverage that actually fits their life and budget. They compare policies from top-rated insurance companies and do the work for you for free. You can even get same-day coverage up to $2 million with no medical exam. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% at selectquote.com slash dsh. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash dsh today to get started at selectquote slash dsh Phone So there no it all about movement motion move in and flow so in the afternoon we need to have a reboot so it's a 20-minute reboot when they did it we measured it every person that did it the average person got 26 percent more work done the days they did brain tap over the days they didn't they had a 54 improvement in their in their what they call the happiness score. We didn't even work on their sleep, but they had a 73% improvement in their sleep scores because they offloaded stress in the middle of the day. Now, if you can't do it at two in the afternoon exactly, then you can do it when you get home from work. Because what it'll do is it'll reboot the system. You'll have more dopamine, more cortisol, more neoprenephrine. These are the things we need to get going and get after it. But we need to go through a cycle because every night when you sleep, and then we'll talk about the sleep one, when you go to sleep at night, your body's not just processing what you thought about, what you brought about, what you were concerned about. It's actually trying to figure out all the problems you have in your life and creating solutions. But if you keep bringing it problems, it thinks, boy, Sean just wants to have more problems. So it basically becomes like that Chinese knot that just keeps getting tighter the more you pull on it. So we've got to loosen that up, relax, let the body and the nervous system unwind. And that starts with the body, your movement, stretching. That's why we say yoga, Tai Chi, dance, whatever. Get your body moving, breathing again. Get your body eating the right materials. But then when you get to the sleep cycle, at the end of the day, you should be at the low because there's a cortisol trough. When you wake up in the morning, you should be a little anxious. You should be a little, because imagine for 200,000 years, we would wake up outside. It's only been a very short time that we've had shelter in what we're doing. So the light of the sun would come in and we'd get a flash. That flash would wake up our brain. Now we're part of the food chain. We're not just going to lay there. We're going to get up. What do we need to do? We didn't have refrigerators. There wasn't a convenience store at every corner. There wasn't a grocery store you could throw a rock in any direction and hit. We had to go get our food. We had to go build our huts. We had to move. We were not the same people. That genetic memory is inside of us. you know in in 2018 talk about what happened in 2015 but in 2018 another great experiment great breakthrough that happened because in 20 2003 when they said hey we've mapped the human genome you remember that yeah they said wow we can and then they go you know what we only map one percent that other 99 is junk well in 2018 they finally have technology that figured out there are switches on our genes they call these things epigenetics that's what all of these stem cells and all these different things they're finding out now. They can put different chemical solutions, different thoughts, different activities, different external exponents, and the cells actually change. We know now, MIT did a study that showed we pull codes from the center of the universe. This isn't metaphysics. I don't want anybody to believe what I'm saying. Keep your beliefs at church. This is science. They've proven it in science that we are light beings that absorb light energy and we transmit them as codes through our body. So Sean, if I could take your DNA for a minute, I pull it out of your body, I'd staple it to the floor. I could pull it out to Pluto, which I still consider a planet. So when you think that's how much is inside you right now, it's a viscous material. Its whole job is to keep your DNA braided. But that DNA they now know, MIT showed that every 40 seconds or so, it rebraids. Means you change. So one last thing, and I'll let you ask a question. When you think about the ancient rishis, they say, I live near a river. Where Mystic Pines is, I have a river out there. And when I look at that river, the Neuse River, I say, wow, that's the Neuse River. It's not the same river it was yesterday. There's new water out there. There's new fish out there. The sediments at the bottom of that river are different. That is a new river. Then the Rishis would say, you never step into the same river twice. What they were saying was, you never step into the same body twice. But the problem is, most people never deal with their thoughts. They carry their consciousness with them. And I call them the dragons of the past in my first book, Awaken the Genius, because people drag them on and drag them on. So imagine for a minute, I'm Superman. I'm being interviewed by the great Sean Kelly. And you're saying, so the first thing I'm going to tell you is, I'm going to bring out my kryptonite. I'm going to put it here on the table and go, Sean, this is what makes me powerless. I'll tell you all the ways you can use this against me. No, I wouldn't do that as Superman. I wouldn't even tell you about kryptonite. I would put that in a lead box, put it in a vault, never tell anybody. But people take all their hurts, all their scars, everything. Oh, sorry about that. All their things that are going on for them. And they broadcast the world. This is what makes me less than myself. unless you're using that to transform people's lives because once you once you get past it once you once you there's not a superhero on the planet there's not a comic book ever written that that superhero didn't have to go through the dark night of the soul because that's the hero's journey we all have a hero's journey whatever you're going through right now whatever pain whatever suffering whatever's going on for you you should be blessing it it is true god does not give you anything you can't handle. The problem is you didn't know you had to handle it. You didn't train for it. You didn't know you're going to run the 100-yard dash this morning. So let's start training now. In the morning SMR, in the afternoon, theta or gamma. In the evening, let's do some delta training. If we can get you to have, in our sleep study we did with the cold miners in Australia, we improved their sleep in two weeks. In three weeks, they were 70% better than other people who were, these cold miners, when I first did the study, we did a two-week washout study, the average coal miner spent 10 hours a night in bed. You'd think, wow, they're sleeping great. No, they weren't. They only had one minute of deep sleep and virtually no rim. So they were in bed, but they weren't sleeping. This is the misnomer people have about sleep. It's not about time in bed. It's like having employees. It's not about how much time they clock in for. What was their output? So what did you do during sleep? So sleep, I'm doing a new program with Dr. Credo, who's Dr. Amen's sleep doctor. We're doing a program called Sleep Like a Champion because sleep is a sport. You've got to look at your life like, today, I'm going to improve the things I can. Number one, I'm going to become more resilient about stress. You got to say, who cares? Or what the heck? Or whatever other word you want to use. You got to let things go. Don't try to control everything. And then go with the flow. Change the things you can, of course, but then embrace those things you can't change. How can you work around them, through them, make them a part of your thing? But if you can take your biggest liability and make it your superpower, now you have something you can take to the world. And that's really what I think every person listening, you have a superpower. We all have superpowers. If they found in 2015 that we have this glial lymphatic system, if they found in 2018 that we have this epigenetic system, that, by the way, changes by two factors. One is, do you look at life as an optimist or do you look at it as a pessimist? And what they showed was people that look at life as a pessimist actually down-regulate their nervous system, and they produce 200 times less light. We can measure the photon exchange between, remember the electron transport chain? It's just like electricity in the walls. That electricity doesn't just run along those wires. That's why we feel EMF. We feel when we get around dirty energy because that energy is not, we're that same way. We have energy. So there are certain people in our life that we call drainers. And then we have gainers. So we want to be around gainers because what happens is our energy is precious. And you should be building up your energy in the morning. That first, your morning should be yours. If you win the morning, you're going to win the day. And then in the middle of the day, don't be surprised if that cortisol trough drops. It's supposed to. It's the way we're designed. That's the way our body. So we're supposed to take a nap, but we don't. So what we did is we used technology now to mirror a nap. A 20-minute session of brain tap is equivalent to a four-hour nap. In our study we did with over 600 people, 27% neurological improvement from one brain tap session. Now, it doesn't last because you're not the same person. Yesterday, you were a different person. Your nervous system is different. The challenges you have are different. Do you look at life as a threat or a challenge? We need to flip the switch. There's no threats anymore. There's only challenges. We don't have to worry about most people listening to this, thank God, don't have to worry about food and shelter and all the things Maslow talked about in his hierarchy of needs. We have different needs now. We have a different life, a different brain, a different lifestyle. So we need to change, and technology is a problem. We need a technology like BrainTap that can be scalable and taken across the globe. And that's why I'm on a mission to better a billion brains. I love it. Moral of the story, guys, get a BrainTap. Click the link in the video. Dude, that was incredible. We're going to have to film again at the studio because I had so many questions for you. But it's been 30 minutes. Thanks for your time. All right, man. Thank you, Sean. Check out BrainTap. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.