Sleep, Eat, Move & Think Better with Dr. Greg Wells Part 2

FASTING

• Expert mentioned: John Berardi at Precision Nutrition.
• Intermittent fasting: started after researching people fasting for Ramadan, reduced inflammation persisted for weeks after Ramadan ended.
• Different pattern: eating within an 8-hour window and fasting for 16 hours (usually we eat while awake — so we eat for 16 hours and fast for 8 hours).
• Scientific evidence suggest intermittent fasting improves neurogenesis, autophagy, and blood sugar regulation.
• An easy strategy to fast: skip dinner, skip eating while on the plane.

SLEEP FOODS

• Good to understand how different types of foods can impact on your sleep and adjust your diet accordingly.
• Eating carbohydrates in the evening can help with sleep, help you to relax: keep in mind this can be problematic for body composition, if you’re struggling with sleep it can be a short-term solution.
• Protein before bed can improve growth hormone release and  muscle recovery.
• High fat and high spice food will typically disrupt sleep.

EXERCISE

• People make the mistake of thinking mind and body are separate, but everything is connected to the brain (every brain center, immune system, breathing, and circulatory systems, muscle movements).
• Remember: if you move your brain functions better.
• Nature journal: the brain of a zebrafish lights up as soon as it starts swimming, and this relationship is true for every species on the planet including us.
• Shutting kids brains off in school by telling them to sit down and be still all day to learn.
• Remember: as your body moves your brain grooves, sitting is the new smoking.
• Morning workouts are great for stimulating the growth of new neurons (great for people working in cognitive jobs).
• Noon workouts can be helpful for people who experience slumps at that time.
• A 20-minute walk is enough—it doesn’t have to be a hard exercise to bring the brain to life, even 2 minutes can help.
• 15 minutes of walking a day is enough to reduce your risk of breast and colon cancer by up to 40%.

USING EXERCISE TO BOOST MENTAL PERFORMANCE

• Walking improves creativity, walking in nature improves problem-solving.
• Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs: he never sat down in meetings, needed to move to think clearly.
• For brain performance, you can sprinkle little bits of exercise in: take walks rather than strict workouts.
• Walking meetings: you’ll come up with much better ideas than if you sit down at a conference table together.
• Jim uses walking to get his phone calls done, blocks out a certain amount of time to walk and get things done.
• To operate in a reflective, contemplative state (alpha waves), or to complete deep tasks requiring deep focus, you need to be still and calm.
• For beta wave activity like thinking, hustling, and operating, movement helps—for this, you can use standing desks, move as you’re trying to create and generate new ideas.

ENVIRONMENT

• Craft an environment for yourself where success and excellence and inevitable.
• Thomas Edison & Menlo Park: find out more here.
• Create a home design that boosts your performance but also brings you joy.
• Greg has created an environment for his kids that gives them things to do aside from watching TV.
• Creating a positive environment means you won’t have to rely as much on your willpower to get the results you want.
• Ask yourself: what is the outcome I want?
• Then work backward from this, and ask yourself: What does my daily life have to look like, what does my development have to look like, to achieve this outcome? What skills and capacities do I need to develop?
• Don’t let other people or the way the world as it is currently designed to dictate your outcomes or influence your potential.
• Rather than waking up hoping you’ll be focused and creative, design it that way.
• Remember: hope without habits is lost, when you wake up set your intention.

MINDSET

• Your efforts will come to life if you have the foundation of healthy eating, sleeping, and exercise.
• Meditation: training the ability to focus and control your attention is one of the most important skills we need to have in this world of distraction and tech.
• When interacting with social media, remember ‘intention not compulsion’.
• Remember: technology is a tool, don’t let it use you and turn you into a consumer or product rather than a creator, use it to reach your potential.
• Most people are training their distraction muscles, meditation is an alternative to this.
• Task-switching is exhausting physically: each time you switch task you’re shifting blood flow and fuel, activating different parts of the brain, opt for a single task.
• Dr. Brynn Winegard: whatever you are doing during the day is rewiring and changing your brain, regardless of what you are doing: this is true whether you’re focusing, practicing, studying or binge-watching Netflix, so the more good habits you can create, the better.
• We can literally rewire the way our brains work at any time in our lives regardless of our pasts.
• Ask yourself: what would your life look like in a year if you spent 20 minutes every day reading a biography of one of the masters rather than spending 20 minutes mindlessly scrolling? You wouldn’t recognize yourself.
• Remember: consistency compounds, knowledge is only power when we apply it.
• Leonardo was also in architecture, physics, anatomy, polymath: Mona Lisa was in his room unfinished.
• Remember: never give up, never stop improving, make life your masterpiece.

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** Please note, this episode is educational only and is not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.Please consult your healthcare provider if you have any questions or concerns.

GREG’S BOOKS

• The Ripple Effect

 

• First book Superbodies