Dr. Tommy Wood: Enhancing Brain Performance & Preventing Dementia

1. Dr. Andy Galpin

   The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform.

2. Dr. Andy Galpin

   I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. In today's conversation, I'm going to be talking to my friend, Dr. Tommy Wood. Tommy has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Cambridge University, a medical degree from Oxford, as well as a PhD in physiology and neuroscience. Tommy is now running his neonatal neuroscience lab at the University of Washington. In addition to all that, he is a well-versed rower and strongman and has worked with athletes across every sport, and in particular, more recently, focusing a lot on Formula 1 drivers. And I say all this to help you understand that Tommy's ability to run back and forth between physiology and science and application into human performance is really unparalleled in the areas of brain health and cognitive function. So in our discussions today, we talk a lot about those areas.

3. Dr. Andy Galpin

   We talk about how to enhance, understand, identify short-term cognitive performance, what that even means, what that looks like from an exercise and supplementation and technology perspective. And then we talk about how that looks in the long term. So how do we prevent and even deter or eliminate things like dementia and brain aging? And Tommy, over the course of our discussion, will bring up at least five points that I feel like are quite counterintuitive or, in other words, are going to surprise or potentially even aggravate some folks out there. The reality of it is, I don't think a lot of us truly understand the current state of the literature on both short and long-term cognitive function, and Tommy does a wonderful job in this conversation of bringing that to the forefront so we really are more understanding of what the literature says and how that transfers into practical application.

4. Dr. Andy Galpin

   Another thing I think worth mentioning here that we get into, that I get asked about all the time is how things like exercise have a causal effect on brain health. And, of course, there's a correlation between strong muscle and physical performance and how well you age, but how is it directly impacting and how is that a causal, if it is at all? Tommy wonderfully walks us through all that in a way that I think everyone can comprehend and get a great grasp on. So with all that in mind, I hope you thoroughly enjoy this conversation today with Dr. Tommy Wood. Dr. Tommy Wood, welcome to Perform.

5. Dr. Tommy Wood

   Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you.

6. Dr. Andy Galpin

   There's a lot of things I want to get into today, things that you and I have chatted about before, but mostly things that I actually don't know the answer to. Hopefully, I can pry some information out of you about enhancing brain performance, things that we can do now in the short term, as well as long-term brain health. But I think before we can get to that, for my own personal sake, I know I say some of these things wrong-

7. Dr. Tommy Wood

   Uh-huh

8. Dr. Andy Galpin

   ... so I'm hoping you can fix this. But maybe it would be best for us to just start off with what is cognitive performance? How do you define that? How should we think about it, and what are the aspects of cognitive performance?

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