Many of you asked for resources, not only for tools and techniques, but resources to help. What do I use Jim? What did you use to help focus and have mental alertness and to be creative when you were writing your book, for example? And you can see this kind of Star Trek device here, this is one of my, kind of to say, a secret weapon, if you will, that I used when I was writing, actually a good half of the book.
And so I have a very special guest. This is Rowena Gates:. And we’ve been longtime friends. And I appreciate you taking time, you are here presenting, we’re both here presenting at the Biohacking Conference. And I wanted to capture this with the team to help bring this resource to you. And we’re going to talk about some quick tips on how to reduce brain fog, mental fatigue, and how to uplevel your executive functions so you can win more today. And so thanks for being on the show.
Rowena Gates:
There’s two areas that I look at. One is the long term prevention of damage so you’re in top form when you sit down and have to concentrate for long periods of time. And those are making sure you have an appropriate antioxidant regime, not too much, not too little. And then the obvious one is exercising and sleep, they are all things that help your brain clear up the bad stuff, and feed the good stuff into the brain so it’s really ready to go. So those are the optimizing performance things that help with the whole body, especially important for the brain.
Jim Kwik:
What’s the damage? What do people experience, when we talk about oxidative stress? how would you describe that?
Rowena Gates:
That’s when the damage outweighs the ability of your body to prevent it, basically. So it accumulates. And the brain burns about 20% of your oxygen, and it’s about 2% of your weight or something like that. So you really burn a lot of oxygen, so you have a lot of oxidation there, and that can lead to oxidative stress. And you know you have oxidative stress when you start to get brain fog, lack of performance, lack of clarity and so on.
Jim Kwik:
Yeah. And this is this is a topic I think that is pretty rampant. I think people whether they’re working from home or living at work and having children, and as…. You know, we’re having these these adverse effects on performance. And so what is it? Do people just take antioxidants? Or what do you recommend?
Rowena Gates:
It’s definitely lifestyle, to optimize that side of it, and it depends on their diet. So everybody is so individual that it’s hard to make it a broad statement, but it is worth paying attention to, and making sure that you’ve got the good stuff in there, and you’re not exposed to bad things that cause oxidative stress and bad chemicals, too much sunlight and….
Jim Kwik:
Environmental toxins.
Rowena Gates:
Environmental toxicities, all of that. So that’s the long term piece, that’s just kind of setting yourself up for a good result. And then in the short term, there are some techniques that brain scientists come up with, and you know you’ve used to some extent, but one is the technique where you set a timer for 20 or 25 minutes, what’s appropriate for you, and then you get up, you move around, and you don’t think about what you were concentrating on. And for executives, it’s so easy to sit down and realize a whole hour or even two hours have gone by staring at the screen without moving and without giving your brain a chance to catch on.
Jim Kwik:
And also giving your eyes time to rest. There’s this digital fatigue where we’re on screens all the time, or we’re on Zoom, and visual fatigue can lead to mental fatigue.
Rowena Gates:
Exactly. And so the visual part is something on the short term, but also just close your eyes for a few minutes, or roll them in your head. Or another one that’s really valuable, obviously, is breath work. And literally, it doesn’t have to take that long, but closing your eyes, resetting your breath, give your body a chance to reset and process what you’ve been working on, the brain can then clear things out and move forward. And in the long run, you’re much farther ahead than if you just kept hammering at it. Meanwhile, you’re creating the oxidative stress that we don’t want.
Jim Kwik:
And that’s the thing, it’s not only what’s attainable, but what’s sustainable over time.
Rowena Gates:
Right.
Jim Kwik:
So anybody could have a burst of focus or energy and work hard past the threshold, but then you create, you know, this negative loop work, creates more adverse effects. And so you’re working and studying with students, people of all ages, all ages and stages for about 25-30 minutes, the Pomodoro Technique before we start having more of that, we have these cognitive demands. And then our focus or concentration goes down, so you take a break, a brain break. And you’re moving, you’re especially moving your eyes, which I love. Because we’re looking at devices like this, so we’re at this distance, and if you’re watching this on YouTube, or wherever social channels, and but it’s not getting the flexibility, it’s not looking off in the distance. And you’re also giving you, I want to really emphasize and highlight something you said. You’re not thinking about what you were doing at that time, you have this this focused vision where you’re very focused and alert, but then you need to give your brain a little time to rest, to be able to do divergent thinking, be able to free flow, to integrate what you’ve just seen.
Rowena Gates:
Exactly. And without that, it doesn’t have the chance to shuffle things around, store them appropriately and make them available when you need them. Which could be very creative processing, if you’re lucky.
Jim Kwik:
Right. So during your brain break, you’re moving your body, you’re moving your eyes, hopefully you’re physically moving, because, we’re sitting behind screens all the time, which can be a big challenge. You’re also reading, because a lot of people when they’re sitting at their desk, they’re studying, their diaphragm is collapsing, not getting oxygen, as you mentioned, your brain is approximate 2% of your body mass, but it’s an energy hog, uses like 20% of the nutrients and the oxygen. You can hydrate obviously, some people are just dehydrated, and that will make them mentally slow as well. So that, those are very powerful, simple things that people could do that make a huge difference in terms of your return and the rewards that you need. Definitely that.
Rowena Gates:
Absolutely. And also the long term benefit to your brain. We want to keep up on that oxidative damage, because you don’t want anything accumulating long term in an aging process. And oxidative stress kind of is that aging process, because if we didn’t have that, there is no reason most of the cells in our bodies would get old. You’re constantly being damaged, and you want to keep it healthy.
Jim Kwik:
And a lot of us, we need…. And you know, we’re at a conference on longevity and performance. People, they’re always reaching, very stretching, but not stabilizing. You can reach, but you need to also recover from that as well. Whether it’s your athletic, your physical body or your mental, your mind. Now I know a lot of people are watching this, and they’ve seen some pictures of me on social media where I have this device, this technology sitting on my desk when I’m writing, my dog is always there on my side. He likes to use this also as well. But people are looking at this mic a little confused. How do you describe this to someone who’s just listening to this? What do they see?
Rowena Gates:
So you’re seeing a box about the size of a printer with the long arm coming out at the end of the tube that you can breathe from. And there’s bubbling water on top of the device.
Jim Kwik:
It has color.
Rowena Gates:
It has color, this is decorative. And inside the device, there’s all the magic happens in terms of the excitation of the water droplets that are going through the tube and inhaled.
Jim Kwik:
Right. And I bring this up to everybody, because people asked me, Jim, what are some of the tools you’re using to be able to have that extra edge? I feel like I’m not using certain tools. I’m not the highest version of myself, right? And so this is called a NanoVi?
Rowena Gates:
Yes.
Jim Kwik:
Okay. So what I’m doing with it is I’m sitting a certain amount of time, either I have this or I have some kind of attachment to it that allows me to breathe, and it’s very passive. And that’s why I love it. I could be doing other things, I could be reading, I could be writing. Sometimes when I’m using it, it feels like I don’t have that mental fatigue and its easy. You know, I don’t suffer from the brain fog, and then my executive function is extremely sharp. And I can tell you that I probably wrote half of Limitless with this on. So, tell me some of the science behind this because our audience likes to geek out. How does it yield results?
Rowena Gates:
Well, I have to say first, it’s so funny because Dave Asprey said the same thing with his Headstrong book, that it was what led him to stay up and get it done years ago. But the science behind it, we’re drawing on other areas of science, between water science, biology and biophysics. And what we’re doing is emitting a specific wavelength inside the device that can be transferred through the water. And when it hits the water, which is the mucous membrane in your nose, or lungs. Once it hits, the water environment in the body, is transferred throughout the body, and it’s initiating what’s called the exclusion zone or ordered water in the cells. And the reason we do that is because all proteins, everything in cells, are immersed in water, and that water is actually a source of energy for the proteins to fold. They have to fold or else they don’t function. And then we simply improve the whole environment, we kind of re-energize the water, that lets the proteins do what they know to do. So we don’t want to override anything. Its just your body knows what to do, it is just giving it a little extra support. And we’re giving the body a little extra oxidative stress generally with our lifestyles.
Jim Kwik:
You know, I see the tool and how popular it is here at this longevity performance Biohacking Conference. When I’m talking to people about it, who’ve been using it for, I have been using it personally for years, they report the same kind of results. And people want to see diagrams and even video of how this actually works. We set up a site for you and we put together a special offer for our audience, just so you know, and I want to thank you for that. Because some people ask all the time, again, Jim, I eat the brain foods you recommend, your sleep protocol. But I want some more, I want to get from here to here. What are those things, those kind of secret weapons that allow you to? Tools or technology, to be able to enhance our physiology? And so that’s pretty remarkable. And it just looks, I can’t tell you how many clients we have that we recommend it to, they see this and they just want to know about it is. It’s very unique looking.
Rowena Gates:
Yeah, it’s a little bit interesting. It’s a very unique technology. There’s absolutely nothing like it.
Jim Kwik:
And you’ve done all kinds of patents on this.
Rowena Gates:
Yeah. And the studies on it. And it’s interesting, because on qEEG, you could see inappropriate brain activity diminish. The stressed executive, which is exactly what we’ve been talking about. And you can see before and after.
Jim Kwik:
And about what’s the average usage in terms of benefits
Rowena Gates:
Well, on this device, it’s about 15 or 20 minutes, but you and I, would use it more, right?
Jim Kwik:
Right. Especially depending on the load that we have. In terms of the oxidative load. And, you know, a lot of people are suffering from decision fatigue. And those are costly mistakes and errors. And so in this conversation, whether it happens to be knowing your limit in terms of how much time you’re spending, studying and working, 25-30 minutes, taking a brain break. Using that time to move not only your body, but your visual apparatus to be able to look in different directions, towards some indirect sunlight, breathing, which is very fundamental. Sometimes it’s interesting, just to get a reminder of what you’re doing, when you’re doing really, really well. And if you also like to go deeper, I recommend you look at these different models. And maybe there’s one that could be supportive for you, your team and your family also as well. The number of clients I know and even podcast guests have raved about this technology also as well. So I want to thank you for making this available to the world, making it available to our community also as well. So wherever you are watching this, you take a screenshot and tag, you know, Eng3 Corp and tag myself, and let us know your thoughts about how you overcome burnout, mental fatigue, brain fog. How do you improve executive function? I’ll share some of my favorites as always, and we will actually send a copy of my book just to some people, just as thank you for participating. And so thank you again for making this available taking time out of your busy schedule for the show
Rowena Gates:
Such a pleasure. Thank you.
Jim Kwik:
Hi, Kwik Brain, it’s your brain coach, I want to thank you so much for watching this video. Three things to do.
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