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Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.
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Sometimes we get caught up in what feel like infinite loops when trying to figure things out.
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Markets go up and down, research is presented and then refuted, and we find ourselves right back where we started.
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The goal of this podcast is to learn how we can reset our thinking on issues that hopefully leaves us with a better understanding as to why we think the way we think and how we might be able to change that to avoid going in infinite loops of thought.
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We hope to offer our listeners a fresh perspective on a variety of issues and look at them through a multifaceted lens — including history, philosophy, art, science, linguistics, and yes, also through quantitative analysis.
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And through these discussions help you not only become a better investor, but also become a more nuanced thinker.
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With each episode we hope to bring you along with us as we learn together.
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Thanks for joining us, now please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops.
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Disclaimer: Jim O'Shaughnessy is chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, where Jamie Catherwood is an associate.
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All opinions expressed by Jim, Jamie and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
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This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
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Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well hello, everyone.
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It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another episode of Infinite Loops.
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I am really excited with today's guest, Louisa Nicola, who is, wow, you are so impressive, a neuroscientist and a neurophysiologist whose goal, which I think you're going to tell me I'm wrong on it because of a new venture of yours, but your mission statement is very simple and I love it.
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I help athletes train their brain for peak performance. Welcome.
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Louisa Nicola: Jim, thank you so much.
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I'm so excited to be here and you got that tagline right.
2:47
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So what I'd like to start with is just give our listeners your story.
2:54
How did you become so interested in this?
2:58
Talk maybe a little bit about the fact that you are now coming into my world a bit working with portfolio managers.
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But I just want you to tell our listeners how you got here.
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Louisa Nicola: So it's an interesting story.
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I started off as a triathlete, so I raced professionally in Australia.
3:18
I raced in Beijing and I raced in a number of different countries.
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And that's where I really got the art of high performance because you've got to try and be the best in three sports.
3:30
So that's how I started my journey and I really got to understand what it takes to perform at an elite level, what it takes to consistently perform and do well and I really loved that aspect.
3:40
I fell in love with sport.
3:42
I just fell in love with it, and I fell in love with that competitiveness that it takes to get to the top.
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So that was my start in that world.
3:53
And then there was a time in my life where I was riding my bike, Jim, and this was two weeks before I was meant to race in Beijing, and I actually got hit by a car.
4:02
So I was riding my bike and this car just came at 40 miles an hour, sorry, 40 kilometers an hour.
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Hit me and I literally lost everything, obviously.
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I was concussed, I snapped my femur, I snapped my collarbone and I was out of action.
4:22
And I had just finished my first undergraduate degree, which was in sports performance, exercise physiology. I was sitting down.
4:31
I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life.
4:33
My entire goal was to be the number one triathlete in the world and then for some reason, I fell in love with medicine.
4:40
I fell in love with healing my body and regaining strength and getting back on the bike by literally taking medicine and physiology into account.
4:51
So I got back on the bike, I trained, I ended up competing again.
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I came 13th in the world after this accident and then I went on to study medicine and that's when I pretty much combined the two.
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I thought if I was able to get back on the bike by understanding physiology and anatomy and understanding my brain, there's no way that players can't perform better or get better at any type of performance at sport without understanding human physiology.
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So I combined the two and started my own company, Neuro Athletics.
5:27
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So wow, first, that's amazing.
5:31
There's so much to unpack there too and I hope you'll indulge me.
5:37
So first off as I listen to you, I hear somebody who already has the mental habit of, I am not going to let this destroy me.
5:48
I am not going to let this define my life about the accident because a lot of people might let that happen.
5:56
So congratulations for the fact that you seem to retain your agency, which I think is something that's really, really important.
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We'll get into it a little bit more when we're talking about peak performance.
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But also, how long did it take you?
6:14
How long did it take you at to get back into the physical shape, while at the same time learning about the functions that the brain and the rest, our diet, et cetera, which we're going to talk about later, what period of time was that before you got back on that bike?
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Louisa Nicola: It took me eight months to get back on the bike.
6:35
And here's the thing that's really interesting.
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Nowadays, in 2021, we have the Whoop Band. We have an Oura Ring.
6:41
We have so many different pieces of technology to measure performance.
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I was training in an era, I sound old when I say that, but we didn't have technology available to us.
6:53
So back then, and there wasn't a lot of education around human physiology as there is today, so back then, in order to get back on the bike and regain strength, it was all about Louisa, you've just got to get back on the bike and just do it and build your fitness up again.
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And I think now, 10, 12 years on, I think that's very misleading because when you really understand the brain, you understand that the brain comes first.
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The brain comes first before the body.
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The brain tells the body what to do.
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And we weren't learning about the brain.
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My coach wasn't telling us about the brain.
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And when you looked at professional teams back in 2011, all the way up to 2013, which is when I retired, there were hardly any psychologists.
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So there definitely weren't anybody combining the medical approach into performance.
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And I got to tell you, the thing that got me back on the bike wasn't the fact that I had to regain my strength.
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The thing that got me back into racing wasn't the fact that I regained my fitness.
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It was the fact that I had to train my brain to overcome the thoughts, or if you will, the past thoughts of getting hit.
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Because every time I got on the bike, I thought, "I might get hit."
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So I had to retrain my brain through various different mechanisms to overcome that fear and then it's about, okay, how do we retrain those neural patterns that we once knew that have been cut off, literally, sawn off?
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So how do we retrain those?
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There is so much more to fitness, to sport, than just the repetitive act of cycling.
8:26
So I think that was the beauty of it.
8:27
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I agree.
8:31
So I'm a research junkie and I go down a lot of rabbit holes.
8:35
And one, as I was listening to you, Timothy Leary of the psychedelic fame was actually a professor, at Harvard, of psychology, who Richard Nixon decided to make the poster boy for being anti-psychedelics.
8:53
Anyway, he had this theory about imprinting that we got very young.
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And one of the things that he talked about, that I want to ask you about, is he said some of the very first imprinting that happens to us, that we can't control because it's being done to us by our parents and that is, as he termed it, the winner or the loser script.
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And he goes on, but I'm going to ask you to go on.
9:25
Because what I heard you say was the first thought I had was, "Oh, she's got a winner's script."
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I mean, does that make sense to you?
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Louisa Nicola: Yeah, absolutely.
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First and foremost, fundamentals of neuroscience, the way our brain develops over time, we have this capacity that at around 25, that's when our brains stop really developing.
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But in the really early ages, like you said, when we're toddlers, we don't learn how to speak.
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We have to learn through what we see.
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How do we react to things?
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We see that from our parents, our surroundings, whoever you're surrounded by.
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So that definitely does play a key role.
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Now, when you say you heard that winner's aspect, I get asked about that a lot, and I honestly think this comes down to...
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So I come from, born and raised in Australia to immigrant parents.
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My parents were both born and raised in Cyprus, so we're Greek Cypriot, and I saw them come to a different country and they earned their success and their hard work and their money, everything, through, I always say through their hands.
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I had to watch them go to work seven days a week, coming home late. There was no days off.
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Once I was born, I was already at the shop.
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Within a week, my mom went back to work and I saw the grit that it took as I was getting older, the determination, the fact that there was no days off.
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And that's just how it was embedded in me.
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I didn't know anything different. I took this to school.
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I excelled in certain areas of school because of this.
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I took this into my social life.
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I was very strict growing up and that's what I took into my sporting life.
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And the fact that I got hit, I always believe that there's always a way, unless it was death.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right.
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Louisa Nicola: And I actually think that today.
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I always say to my athletes, "Unless there is a component of death, then we've got to do it." Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah. Yeah.
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I agree completely with that point of view.
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I've been startled often when I speak to people that I would think would agree with it and I found many who just poo-poo it or say, "Oh, well there's a lot more to it than that."
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And so, of course, I see that as a different programming script running in their head. Louisa Nicola: Yeah. The thing is... Sorry to cut you off.
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I was going to say, there does come a time, I think, where DNA does play a role and in that aspect, DNA of how have you been programmed? What are your values?
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And I think that does come into play as well. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
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I just had Robert Plomin on, who's an expert in genetic behavioral science and whoa, there's a lot to unpack there.
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And so I definitely agree with you.
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The other thing, there's a great book called The Hypomanic...
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Well, I shouldn't say a great book.
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It's a great title and a great thesis, but the rest of the book, eh.
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But it's called The Hypomanic Edge, why a little craziness makes America do all these great things.
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And his thesis in the book was, hey, who came to America?
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Well, risk seekers came to America.
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Who else would you know that left their home country at birth, often with no money, got on a ship, back in the old days, got on a ship that they were risking their life to be on.
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Came, had nothing and built.
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It sounds like you and your parents went through a similar, hopefully less arduous, travel to Australia.
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But what do you think about that?
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You think that there is sort of a genetic structure to top athletes to top portfolio managers?
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Louisa Nicola: Yeah, I think there is.
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Now, I am one to say that you can, through this thing called adult neuroplasticity, you can train the brain.
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You can train certain aspects of who you are to be better at what you want.
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Now that comes down to a very concise manner and approach and we'll talk about that.
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But I get asked often, Jim, "Louisa, is it all DNA?"
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I say, "Well, some components are."
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I mean an NBA player, unless you're incredibly gifted, you do have to possess the maybe six foot nine or seven foot for some players and that's something that you just can't train.
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You can't train yourself to be far taller.
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But then there's other aspects, Major League Baseball, for example.
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I don't know if you know this, but out of all the sports, visual acuity or the visual component of sports is most important in baseball and that is something that you're born with.
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And I actually wrote an article about this on my newsletter saying that can scouts go out and pick kids who have got a very high visual acuity and have got perfect vision scores at the age of seven or eight and train them to be better baseball players? I think about that.
14:45
I don't know if that's true, but if it takes the right DNA, then shouldn't we be weeding out everybody in their preteens to save them the hassle of not making it to the Major League Baseball?
14:59
So these are things I think about.
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So they're the opponents that are really like, if you want to be that LeBron, if you really want to be that good, then maybe that's where DNA comes into it.
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But when we're talking about training, how can a portfolio manager get better or how can they eliminate fear or how can they make better and faster decisions, these are things that we can really train and we can train them to through the applications of neuroscience and neurology.
15:25
But you have to be very...
15:27
Like I said, it's individualized and it's deliberate. You can't just wing it. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
15:35
When I was going through your stuff, I saw your three principles that you really require or you won't work with people, not because you're being standoffish or eliminating them, they're self-eliminating if they don't subscribe to these three.
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And I'm going to read them and ask you about them.
15:55
So the first is, must be open and willing to push to the limits.
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Number two, have a strong goal.
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Now a lot of people, recently, it seems to ebb and flow, but people right now, my son included, is writing things about don't have goals, have habits, have processes.
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I'll get your opinion on that after reading number three.
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And you're only as good at your last time at bat. Okay.
16:24
Would you elaborate on those three? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
16:28
So the willingness to learn, I can't accept somebody who doesn't want to be better because why would they come to me in the first place?
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I'm not the Band-Aid method approach.
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You don't come to me when you need to be fixed really.
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A lot of people do, but I'm like, well, I want to improve and optimize for performance.
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So let's minimize the effect.
16:57
In order to do that, it has to be extremely deliberate, has to be extremely individualized.
17:03
You have to get up and do the work. And I say this often.
17:07
Every time I bring on new clients, we work in phases and blocks, if you will, and it goes over a four month period.
17:15
To really get the best out of this, you can't just go for a walk and then get results straight away.
17:21
The things, when it comes to better habits, neurally, when it comes to changing the plasticity of the brain, it takes time, but you've got to do it deliberately and consistently.
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So that's the first thing.
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So you've really got to be wanting to get up, be better, do better so you can implement the strategies.
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Then they get the results.
17:42
Now what I see wrong with goal setting, I don't like the word goal setting, but we have a particular way that we attack the aggressiveness of goals.
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First of all, our brain likes to see something. I'll keep going.
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So the first and foremost is your brain likes to be forward thinking.
18:00
It likes to know where it's going. Forward motion.
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Here's the thing I think we get wrong with goals.
18:08
Your brain needs to have a focus point that can be put on the head of a pin because it needs to be able to just shoot right to that pin.
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It's like a server mechanism in gun.
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You know how in some of those military guns, there's a machine and if you focus it on something, the gun actually moves for you.
18:31
It's the same as your brain.
18:32
If you can focus it on something, it'll eliminate all the distractions unconsciously and it'll just go towards that end focus.
18:40
Now what happens is when a lot of players come to me, one, for example, that I wrote about today, he came to me with the goal of, "Louisa, I just want to play for the English Premier League."
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I said, "Well, that's ridiculous."
18:52
I said, "Have you gotten anywhere close to that?
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Are you even in the Junior League?" "No."
18:59
So if he wants to do that in five years, we have to reverse engineer the process and we have to be really aggressive every single month, every single day, every single second.
19:09
They need to be accounted for with precision, so your brain knows where to go to.
19:14
So when an athlete or a portfolio manager comes to me and they just say, "I just want to be better." I go, "Well, okay. Do you know why? Do you have a goal?
19:24
Do you want to have more financial success?
19:27
Do you want to have a better relationship with your wife or your spouse?"
19:31
And they usually do have a goal, but that's a very big part of it because sometimes they don't know what their goal is. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
19:38
So I work with a lot of younger people, mostly in my community, but in technology and several other things as well.
19:47
And one of the things that I have come away after doing a lot of this with is number one, your idea, that many people, when they're seeking advice or guidance, what they're really doing is asking you to agree with what they want to do. Louisa Nicola: Yes.
20:09
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And not ask questions, just like your fellow who wanted to be in the Premier League and he's not even in the Junior League yet. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
20:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I'm not going to say that's a bad aspiration for him.
20:22
Good on him, if that's his goal for five or six years from now.
20:27
But I agree totally with you that there are a series of steps that you just have to take.
20:32
There's no way around those steps, right? Louisa Nicola: Yeah. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Go... Louisa Nicola: Sorry.
20:37
I get excited every time you talk, because I want to tell you that everything I say comes from neuroscience and here's the thing around goal setting.
20:44
There is this chemical that gets released from your brain.
20:48
You've probably heard of it. It's called dopamine.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
20:51
Louisa Nicola: Now dopamine, it's a molecule and a neuromodulator, but it is released in response to effort and it basically says to your brain, " Hey, you did well in the pursuit of your effort, so I'm going to release dopamine, which means you're going to feel like doing more."
21:09
Now what happens if we've got a big goal and we don't know how to get there?
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We are not going to get that release of dopamine.
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We're going to get the opposite effect.
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We're not going to get any release of dopamine.
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Therefore, we're not going to be pursuing our goals.
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That's why people give up on goals.
21:24
And that's why I say we need to know every week, we're going to be really small, really concise.
21:30
All you have to do, athlete, is hit this goal this week.
21:34
"Oh, Louisa, that was easy.
21:36
Is that all I have to do?" Yeah. "Oh, I feel great. I want to do it again.
21:40
I want to keep doing it."
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These tiny little habits, if you will, get you to that goal.
21:46
You just don't think about it because these big goals are just so far ahead of you that that's the wrong approach. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
21:53
And what you've summarized there is, I think, my son's attitude about it as well, which is habits can let you get those little accomplishments, right?
22:06
And then using your language, your brain releases the dopamine, which encourages you, "Ooh, I like that.
22:14
I want to do more of that."
22:15
So I also agree that one of the biggest challenges that we face as a society, honestly, is this idea of labels that get applied and different people: (a) have very different ideas about what that label means, but (b) you've just delineated it, I think, very well for our listeners.
22:42
When you're saying goals, you're not really talking about something five or seven years hence, or what others call big, hairy, audacious goals.
22:52
You're talking about, almost, if I'm listening right and if I'm hearing you right, you're talking about much more the process that I believe in, and I know my son believes in it maybe even more than I do, which is just goals and process.
23:06
I believe very much in writing and we're going to get to journaling in a bit.
23:13
But when I was 29-years-old, I wrote 63 things that I wanted to accomplish.
23:19
Some were really near term, so to your point of dopamine.
23:25
Some were really, really way out there and honestly, in reviewing it, I've accomplished 93% of them.
23:37
And we're talking about- Louisa Nicola: Wow, congratulations. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ... Well, thank you.
23:42
We're also talking about some really weird ones for a 29-year-old to write, like chair a major arts organization. Hello?
23:49
Louisa Nicola: Yeah, I don't know any 29-year-old who would've said that.
23:54
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Welcome. Hello. Welcome to my life.
23:57
Louisa Nicola: There we go.
23:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so one of the things that I have people do is write out for 10 days in a row, "Hey, what would you like your life to look like?"
24:06
And what's really interesting are that honest people come back to me and say, "Holy shit, that was really hard.
24:12
Do you do anything similar with your athletes?" Louisa Nicola: Yes.
24:15
So you mentioned a few things in there.
24:18
And the first thing is I love when we do the aggressive goal setting and I ask my athletes and portfolio managers, what are your goals?
24:26
Or what is it that you want?
24:27
And when they tell me, we end up spending 90 minutes, I just want to know why.
24:33
And that's what it's like, "But why?"
24:37
Because sometimes their beliefs, like you said, that shape our reality, they really do.
24:43
They believe that they need to achieve this goal.
24:45
Not because they want to, they just believe that that's, I don't know, that's just what we're meant to do, right?
24:52
And so we deconstruct that and sometimes their goals change, because they're like, "Well, that's what I think I should do, but this is what I really want to do." And so the goals change.
25:00
And so that's the first thing.
25:02
The second thing is I like to see goals as targets. I don't say goals.
25:09
I usually just say the word "target." What's your target?
25:13
Like we've got a bow and arrow and if we have to fling it, just tell me what the target is.
25:18
Tell me what it is and tell me what your approach is to getting there? What is your strategy?
25:21
Has your strategy worked? No?
25:24
What have you implemented in your strategy?
25:25
"Well, this, this and this."
25:27
And I'll go, "Well, let me implement something else."
25:30
So you also mentioned something else.
25:32
You said people don't like...
25:32
they just want me to agree with them in terms of advice.
25:39
And this is the art of coaching.
25:43
When you're coaching someone and you're helping them along this path to achieving that target, that's all I am.
25:48
I make all of my athletes...
25:50
And when I say athletes, Jim, I call my portfolio managers, athlete.
25:54
I call everyone an athlete.
25:55
So when they come to me, I get them to set me KPIs. I go, "What are your... that's month one?"
26:01
And they're really taken aback by that.
26:03
They go, "Well, I don't know."
26:05
I go, "Well, tell me your goal and I want you to tell me your KPIs and we're going to get there because we're going to get there through my approach." But that's what we want.
26:15
And this whole notion of goals and targets is just, I think we just need a better way to say it because it's just too broad for the brain.
26:25
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I agree.
26:27
And I like the idea of bringing it down, right?
26:32
Getting to things that: (a) we need to understand who put that idea?
26:38
Who put that desire there? Was it me? Was it my parents? Was it my peers? Was it my education? Was it my religion?
26:47
And people often are very uncomfortable doing this because it causes them to actually question, "Do I believe this?"
27:00
Especially, during times like the current times we're living through.
27:04
I call it the great reshuffle, but there's a lot of moving parts going on right now.
27:10
You mentioned yourself that just 10 or 15 years ago, we didn't have any of the technology, right?
27:16
And now that we can make use of that, we're hopefully going to be able to more finely tune your athletes, including the portfolio managers.
27:27
Although, Louisa, I have to tell you, I've been to lunch with some of these guys and I would not call them athletes.
27:29
Louisa Nicola: That's what they're going to turn into.
27:43
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Nor would I ever call myself an athlete. So maybe "mentalete." I don't know.
27:53
Is there a term for that?
27:54
Louisa Nicola: Well, there is.
27:55
It's called NeuroAthlete.
27:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Oh, well. There you go.
27:58
Louisa Nicola: Which is the company. There you go. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Okay. All right.
28:02
I can get down with that one. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
28:04
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So those assessments are so important, I think. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
28:06
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Because, for example, I think that much of what we do in the normal progression of things is wrong.
28:11
I'm wrong most of the time.
28:12
I'm just willing to admit that and I'm also willing to say I don't know.
28:16
But I'll give you an example, interviewing people for a corporate job, right? Okay.
28:22
"So where do you see yourself in five years?"
28:25
Are you fucking kidding me?
28:29
"What's your biggest weakness?"
28:31
"Oh, I just care too much."
28:33
It's all scripted, right? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
28:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so we are moving, I think, into a world where you are going to do, I think, pretty well, having looked into how your program works.
28:46
We're moving into a world where it's, "No, no, no, no.
28:49
Show me, demonstrate competence." Right?
28:52
And so the question that I ask people wanting to come as research associates at OSAM was easy for me.
29:00
The S&P 500 is a cap- weighted index that reinvest dividends.
29:05
The Dow is a price-weighted index that does not.
29:08
What would the Dow be at today if it reinvested all of its dividends?
29:13
Now, look, I wouldn't get that answer, right? I know that.
29:17
I only got it right because I looked it up.
29:20
That isn't what I'm looking for.
29:22
What I'm looking for is how are they going to go about trying to solve this problem?
29:27
And so I think that the new world that we're moving into, I hope, is going to shed a lot of those old habits and practices.
29:37
Because for example, asking those common interviewed questions, actually, through studies, they've seen, detracts from the interviewer's ability to have a good opinion on that candidate.
29:53
And so bringing it now back to what you do, I want to talk about something that you find extremely important. I do too.
30:02
But I want you to spell it out because I think it's so interesting and it's this idea of sleep routines.
30:13
Sleep seems to be in the zeitgeist right now.
30:16
I reported an earlier episode with a woman who's written a book about sleep.
30:21
I wanted to talk to you about sleep.
30:24
But in your guidance, you have a couple of things that I want you to explain why, okay?
30:30
So in your routine, you suggest that the temperature should be between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
30:39
Jim O'Shaughnessy: You suggest...
30:41
This one seems pretty obvious to me, but I want to talk about how you go about judging it.
30:46
You've got to have a quality mattress. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
30:48
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Totally agree.
30:49
And I'm going to do some disclosures because we invest in a company that I think you are working with. We'll get to that. No cheat days.
30:58
I think that's very interesting.
31:00
And boy, that would be the one I think most people would fail on, but that's just me.
31:07
And then the other two seem kind of hard to me.
31:10
One is minimize light past 8:00 PM.
31:14
And the final one is minimize mental activity. Hello?
31:18
That's [crosstalk] I'm going to fail that one.
31:22
Louisa Nicola: Yeah, most people do.
31:24
But mostly the ones who fail at this are my finance people.
31:29
Athletes are pretty good with not really doing mental activity.
31:33
So let's just deconstruct sleep.
31:34
I speak about that a lot, and now I'm getting known for that girl, the sleep scientist, if you will.
31:41
So first and foremost, when you study neurophysiology, which is...
31:41
have you ever seen, Jim, somebody who has epilepsy?
31:51
They go in, they put this...
31:52
To really get measured, to see what's happening, epileptiform activities.
31:55
You've got to put this cap on your head and these electrodes are coming out.
31:59
It's called an EEG, electroencephalogram.
32:03
That's what I got trained in, that's what pretty much neurophysiology is.
32:06
And this is something that tracks the brainwave activity.
32:10
And we're able to use this to pick up on mainly seizures, but this is the turning point for me.
32:18
When I was studying medicine and then going into neurophysiology, I had to spend a lot of time in the Alzheimer's disease unit.
32:25
And to pick up on early onset Alzheimer's disease, I was doing brain scan after brain scan, after brain scan.
32:31
And when you look at the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, it's somewhat correlated to the pathology of CTE, which is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
32:41
This is something that you get from repeated hits to the head, and you've probably heard of this.
32:48
You can only get it diagnosed when you die and somebody comes and cuts open your brain.
32:52
But this is happening in a lot of our NFL players.
32:56
And I turned to my senior double-board certified neurologist and I said, "If we can pick up on early onset Alzheimer's disease by using this brain scan, do you think we could do this using...
33:09
putting it on an NFL player and assessing for concussions?"
33:12
And he said, "I didn't even think of that."
33:14
I thought, "Wow, that was crazy."
33:19
So that's actually, Jim, how I started my time.
33:21
I started assessing brain.
33:23
I started looking at all of these players. I asked my hospital.
33:26
I said, "Can I use this hospital grade EEG?"
33:30
And they said, "Are you out of your mind?" I said, "No."
33:32
And I literally took the hospital grade EEG.
33:35
It took me three weeks to be able to take this home.
33:40
And I started scanning the brains of a lot of NFL athletes in New York.
33:44
And I was picking up on things that they were like, "Holy crap, Louisa. What is this?"
33:50
And I said, "Well, this scan's showing me that your reaction time is slow.
33:54
You've got this, it picks up on 16 different data points, which we only use to assess for epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease."
34:02
So I was now using it in a sports setting.
34:06
And then these athletes were like, "Well, Louisa, how do I improve my reaction time?
34:11
How do I improve my visual acuity?
34:14
How do I do all these things?"
34:15
I said, "Well, one thing you can do in the scientific literature, everything point...
34:20
When you want to optimize anything, when you want to be leaner, decrease inflammation, have better vision, a lot of the things starts with sleep."
34:29
And so I was doing thousands of hours of research.
34:32
And every time I would find something, it would say, "You can put in this nutritional component, you can do this.
34:39
However, you have to work on sleep first."
34:41
So I was like, "Sleep is the holy grail." It's the first thing.
34:46
So to get board-certified in neurophysiology, you have to spend time in a sleep lab.
34:52
So then again, I was assessing people asleep for 24 hours a day.
34:57
So we'd hooked them up to electrodes.
34:59
And that's when I thought, "Oh, my God.
35:04
You can diagnose so many things from sleep."
35:08
One thing that's really fascinating is we found someone we picked up on the fact that he will, potentially in the next 10 to 15 years, be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
35:18
And this is what we found through a REM sleep behavior disorder that we found in a sleep lab.
35:23
So I became obsessed with sleep. I thought, "Oh, my God.
35:26
Why are athletes not implementing sleep?"
35:29
And my acting neurologist, the one who I spoke to said it quite simply.
35:35
He said, "Louisa, nobody goes to school for 10 to 15 years to just go and optimize performance for athletes."
35:44
Most people go to med school and then go into medicine.
35:47
It's like- Jim O'Shaughnessy: Medicine. Louisa Nicola: ...
35:49
I said, "So I'll be the only one doing that."
35:51
I thought this is interesting.
35:52
So Jim, that's where I started with sleep. I thought that's it.
35:55
Every single person that comes to Neuro Athletics, there has to be a sleep component, there has to be sleep involved.
36:02
So let's talk about why sleep is so important.
36:05
And I love that you mentioned the sleep mattress company because we're going to talk about that.
36:11
First and foremost, sleep.
36:15
Sleep is emotional first aid.
36:16
Gosh, everybody needs that.
36:19
The second thing is this wonderful thing happens when we sleep, Jim.
36:22
Have you ever heard of the lymphatic system? Jim O'Shaughnessy: Sure.
36:25
Louisa Nicola: Your body.
36:27
You go and get lymphatic drainage, you go and get a lymphatic massage because you're moving around the waste products in your body.
36:32
It was around 20 or 30 years ago that neuroscientists found that there is a lymphatic system in your brain.
36:39
It's called the glymphatic system.
36:41
Now, it's called glymphatic because we have different nerve cells, neurons in our brain.
36:46
And one of the neurons are called glial cells.
36:49
It actually comes from the Greek word glue because they basically stick together.
36:53
And what happens is during sleep...
36:56
Now, this is a really important thing.
36:58
It's not when you just close your eyes and just...
37:02
During actual restorative sleep, your brain activates this system, the glymphatic system.
37:09
And what happens is, and it's a really...
37:11
There's an image, actually, a little video of it happening. It's beautiful.
37:15
What happens is the cerebral spinal fluid, all of this fluid, that's filled with toxins, from eating, from in inflammation, from stress, they get eliminated during sleep.
37:29
So you wake up, you feel refreshed, you've got more mental clarity. You feel better. You can see better.
37:38
You don't have that thing that we call brain fog in the morning.
37:42
And I thought, "Well, that's interesting."
37:45
But here's the caveat: if you don't get into sleep, this is deep sleep and REM sleep, you don't activate this system. Okay?
37:55
So that's one thing: why we have to activate, why we have to get into deep sleep.
37:59
The next thing is when we first fall asleep, we go into...
37:59
we have different sleep stages. There's four.
38:06
But in the first three, they're called non-REM sleep, non-Rapid Eye Movement.
38:12
And these are our deep, deep slow-wave sleep.
38:16
And in non-REM stage three, which happens around 45 minutes to an hour after we fall asleep, we get a rapid release of a hormone called human growth hormone.
38:27
This hormone is responsible for protein synthesis.
38:30
So if I will want my athletes to be recovering better and to really get the most out of their training, they need to get this release of human growth hormone.
38:41
So we need to be optimizing for sleep, they need to be getting into these sleep stages.
38:47
All of this stuff is just so apparent to me.
38:49
So when we know, first and foremost, sleep is vital and it provides a million different things that could help us performance-wise, what's stopping us from getting into sleep?
39:01
And there are many different things.
39:03
We mentioned earlier light. What does light do?
39:08
Well, light signals to the brain...
39:11
Any type of light, if you will.
39:13
Light signals to the brain that you're awake and what happens is, and this is where mother nature comes in.
39:18
We have our retina, the front of the eye.
39:22
And we've got these cells that are on the bottom of our retina, semicircle, if you will.
39:28
On the bottom half of our retina that get activated, they're called melanopsin cells.
39:33
And when light hits those cells, these melanopsin cells then signal to a certain area of the brain that's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, it says...
39:39
that's where our internal clock is.
39:45
Signals to the brain, "Oh, I'm awake."
39:48
And what happens then is we get a release of cortisol because we it's basically signaling, you're awake, you need to run away from the tiger and get food to eat.
39:58
So if we're looking at light at night, we're going to be telling our brains that we're awake and we're not going to be getting into sleep.
40:06
So it literally blocks us from getting into sleep.
40:10
So that's one reason why light affects us.
40:12
Another reason is you've probably heard of this, it's called melatonin.
40:15
Have you ever heard of melatonin?
40:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Absolutely.
40:19
Louisa Nicola: People are supplementing with this exogenously.
40:24
Melatonin is a naturally secreted hormone and it gets secreted from the pineal gland in response to darkness.
40:30
So when there's darkness response, your brain says, "Oh, it's lights out.
40:35
Let's secrete melatonin, which makes us become sleepy and gets us into sleep."
40:40
The thing that blocks melatonin, literally blocks it, is light.
40:45
So this is the reason why it's lights out.
40:48
Neuro Athletics, it is lights out. 9:30 PM, lights out. 10:00 PM, bedtime.
40:54
So these are just some of the things.
40:57
And then you mentioned earlier, and I really want to mention this because it's a very big part of the program.
41:02
We get our athletes to sleep on an Eight Sleep mattress.
41:05
I've partnered with Eight Sleep because of this: (1) in order to fall asleep and then stay asleep, we have to have our core body temperature drop two degrees, right?
41:20
Only way to really do this core temperature is by sleeping on a temperature-controlled mattress.
41:27
So I started doing this back early this year.
41:29
In January, I got my first Eight Sleep mattress and I thought this is unbelievable.
41:33
I was waking up and my REM sleep scores were increased, my deep sleep scores were increased.
41:38
And I thought this is incredible.
41:39
It's because I started working on thermal temperature rather than ambient temperature.
41:45
So this is just another reason why we need to be optimizing for sleep.
41:52
We have to be getting things such as a cooling mattress, if you will.
41:55
If there was a better option, people say to me, "Do I need the cooling mattress?"
41:59
I say, "Well, if there's a better option then find it." But there's not.
42:02
The only other option is having someone manually cool you down through the night.
42:06
So I don't think that's feasible.
42:07
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's the one I use. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
42:11
Jim O'Shaughnessy: No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Louisa Nicola: So yeah.
42:15
Jim, these are some of the things that we do at Neuro Athletics to optimize for sleep performance and sleep fitness.
42:21
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So just a disclosure here, Positive Sum, which is a venture capital fund that is run by my son as the general manager and which O'Shaughnessy Family Partners has a significant investment in, has an investment in Eight Sleep.
42:41
We don't want- Louisa Nicola: Oh, wonderful. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ... anyone to think that... Yeah.
42:45
But we're very careful anytime that we interview anyone where we have an investment as well, we want everyone to know that.
42:52
And so I did not ask you on this because you used Eight Sleep, right? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
42:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I would've asked you on if you had used a competitor.
43:03
We need to get that clear because one of the goals here is learning, and we, too, think that the Eight Sleep technology makes a ton of sense, not only, by the way, for athletes, but for everybody.
43:17
Louisa Nicola: For everyone. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
43:19
Who would need a better sense of sleep?
43:22
Let's talk a little bit about that mental activity because I do kind of think that this is an area, whereas you yourself said, athletes and portfolio managers may be very, very different.
43:38
How do you help the person who just can shut their brain off? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
43:45
So there are a number of different ways.
43:47
When people say to me, when you ask people, "Do you have problems sleeping?"
43:52
The two biggest complaints are I have a problem falling asleep or I have a problem staying asleep.
43:58
Now, the former, falling asleep, always comes down to increased mental activity, increase things, thoughts firing, your brain is wired, and this obviously is always my portfolio managers, and they've always got an excuse.
44:11
Always, "I've got to be up with the market.
44:13
I've got to be down with the market.
44:14
I'm doing this and I've got to take care... I've got 30 million." I'm like, "Stop."
44:18
I'm like, "Just we need...
44:20
That's why it's got to be deliberate action." So they always say...
44:24
One of the biggest complaint...
44:25
Like I said, it's 10:00 PM that I advise all of my clients to go sleep.
44:31
You need to be asleep at 10:00 PM.
44:32
They say, " Louisa, I go to sleep at 1:00 AM.
44:34
How am I going to start to get into this?"
44:37
At the start, it's difficult.
44:39
Sometimes we do go out and I advise them take some supplements. Okay?
44:44
Some of the things maybe melatonin to increase that sleepiness hormone activity to get you to fall asleep regularly, and then we wean them off that.
44:52
Another thing is there is this...
44:56
Obviously, I always say a medical disclaimer, nobody should be taking what I say as core advice. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Sure.
45:03
Louisa Nicola: Obviously, check with your practitioner.
45:04
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right.
45:05
Louisa Nicola: But there's this supplement that is completely natural.
45:09
It's a neurotransmitter released your brain. It's called GABA.
45:11
Now, GABA stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid.
45:16
So it is our chief inhibitor neurotransmitter.
45:19
So, Jim, we have neurotransmitters that get fired in our brain and they are just chemical messages.
45:26
Now, when we are thinking too much at night, we don't have a natural release of GABA because our brain is just firing.
45:36
These synapses are going.
45:37
It's telling you, "Go, go, go, go, go, go, go."
45:40
So we don't have this release because we're so turned on. We're so switched on.
45:44
So sometimes I say to my athletes, "Well, let's try you out on some GABA, which is just natural.
45:50
You can get it from a health food store.
45:51
Let's supplement with GABA, which stops. It inhibits. Okay?
45:57
These neurotransmitters from firing, and it calms down your brain. Okay?" This is one thing. The next thing is...
46:04
You've probably heard of magnesium. Okay.
46:06
We usually take magnesium for our body to help us recover and feel better.
46:12
But, Jim, there's three forms of magnesium.
46:16
The one I'm interested in is magnesium L-threonate.
46:21
The reason being is it's the only form of magnesium out of those three that crosses the blood-brain barrier.
46:27
So we've got this wonderful mother nature, again, gifted us with this barrier.
46:31
It coats our brain, and it's great because it stops things from passing through it.
46:37
But other things such as illegal drugs and other things pass through it and magnesium passes through it.
46:44
So what happens when you take magnesium L-threonate? It calms us down.
46:49
It really optimizes for sleep.
46:51
Actually, I take it every night and it does wonders for our brain and it basically calms our brain down.
46:58
Calms down the nervous system, and so we get a bit sleepy and we can really calm down those thoughts.
47:06
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So one of the things that I have, and maybe it's just because of where you are in your career, I always try to reframe things because you've used a lot of medical terms that are foreign to many people.
47:25
I'm crazy and research of all this stuff so I know what you're talking about, but how do you make it so...
47:37
You know all the memes, right?
47:39
Explain this to me like I'm a five year old. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
47:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Or the one I really love was Jeremy Irons saying, "Explain this to me like I'm an Irish Terrier or whatever." Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
47:50
Jim O'Shaughnessy: But how do you do that successfully?
47:54
Do you put it in terms of practices, in mental models? What?
47:59
Louisa Nicola: Oh, Jim, I love that you touched on this.
48:01
This has been the hardest thing of my life, actually, and you've actually said a lot of words in here that I...
48:10
You talk about the Dow Jones and this is not my I'm like, "Oh, what did..." Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
48:14
Louisa Nicola: It's scary sometimes when you don't understand it, and my branding agency once said to me, Louisa, you're talking to smart.
48:24
You need to dumb things down if you want to get your point across, and they said you need to be able to speak on Twitter, as well, as if you're talking to a seven-year- old.
48:33
I thought, "Oh, that's the hardest thing that I have to do."
48:36
It is very hard, but I spend a lot of time educating.
48:40
I would say, over the four-month period of neuro athletics, a large part is educating because...
48:46
I'm sure you would agree with this.
48:48
You implement things more with more passion and with more rigor when you understand it, right?
48:55
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
48:57
Louisa Nicola: Yeah, if you understand why.
48:58
So I spend a lot of time educating and instead of saying the word neurogenesis, I say this helps your brain create new brain cells, for example.
49:08
So it's been very hard for me.
49:10
That's probably been the hardest thing, publicly. Yeah.
49:13
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, and the difficulty, because I'm sort of in the same boat.
49:19
Every occupation has its own jargon and that's for good reasons and for bad reasons. Right?
49:27
Good reasons, if you're talking about medical procedures, I think there's a good reason why you're separating everything from everything else because if you give them the wrong version, that could be very bad.
49:39
For example, with the magnesium. So I get that. I just wonder...
49:45
I always try to figure the things out like this like how would I reframe this so that everybody could immediately understand and go, "Yeah, I want that."
49:58
I guess one of the ways that you've done it, I think successfully, because I went and read your newsletter and I like to research my guests, and so putting things in the multi-point format, I think, is very helpful.
50:14
How do you overcome things like...
50:15
So the 10:00 PM bedtime and the need for, I think you say, seven and a half or eight hours of sleep.
50:26
If that were me, I'm just putting myself in your shoes, and I'm pretty good at reframing things and persuading people about why they should do something.
50:36
Man, that's one I struggled with. I'll be honest. Because I'm a night owl.
50:42
I am usually still reading a book at 11:30 or even 12:00.
50:49
I try to get to bed asleep by 12:30 or 1:00, but I get up at 8:00 and maybe it's just that I can't persuade myself so I couldn't persuade anyone else.
51:02
How do you get people to buy into the whole eight hours and bam?
51:06
Because that does seem...
51:08
Again, this is just my take having just come to it in reading all of your material, which I find most of it incredibly convincing, but this one I'm kind of stuck on. Help me out. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
51:21
I love that you said that.
51:22
So to just two weeks ago, I went to Bonita Bay in Florida and I spoke at this golf club and there was about 50 golfers, and everybody was over the age of, I think, 65, near 60, 65, and I was trying to explain this and then I said, "Does anybody have any questions?"
51:42
I swear, 48 hands went up.
51:43
They all had the same complaint.
51:45
They said, "Louisa, I wake up..." This is fascinating.
51:47
I'm going to write about this, actually.
51:49
"I wake up at 4:00 AM and go to the toilet." I said, "Okay."
51:53
But it was this 4:00 AM thing, and they said like, "What are we..."
51:59
Because I kept saying don't view light, and they're like, "But what if I trip over because I need to go to the toilet?"
52:03
So it was a very long arduous conversation that I had to turn around.
52:07
That's when I thought, "Huh, I must be saying something wrong."
52:11
But let's deconstruct this 10:00 PM thing. Okay?
52:16
Viewing light between the times of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM. Okay?
52:23
Viewing light between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM.
52:24
By the way, let's just pre-frame.
52:27
Your body knows what time it is.
52:30
We have an internal clock. Okay? You've heard of it.
52:34
It's called our circadian rhythm.
52:35
It's in line with the sun so we don't control it.
52:38
So your body knows when it's 1:00 AM. Okay?
52:41
And it knows when it's 3:00 AM.
52:42
So that should first and foremost serve as the confusion around, "Well, Louisa, how does my body know?"
52:48
It knows because it's in line with when the sun comes up and when the sun goes down. That's the first thing.
52:54
If you are viewing light between the times of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM, this triggers a suppression of dopamine.
53:05
We mentioned dopamine earlier. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Sure. Yup.
53:08
Louisa Nicola: When you have a suppression of dopamine, this leads to deficits in learning, deficits in moods, and a host of other problems including a connection to the pancreas, and this starts...
53:23
The pancreas is where we regulate blood sugar.
53:27
So when you wake up in the morning, you've got a suppression of dopamine.
53:33
So when you wake up, you're not going to feel excited, and focused, and ready to power through the day because you haven't got dopamine.
53:40
So you're not giving yourself a head start.
53:43
You're basically woken up and you're like, "Well, okay, I'm already at the back." That's the first thing.
53:49
The second thing is none of us want to get diabetes.
53:55
Not everybody wants to have a really good level of blood sugar control.
54:00
If we know that light suppresses the things that really control our blood glucose and our blood sugar between those times, then we really want to get a hang of that.
54:11
We want to get a grip of that so that.
54:14
These two things there should be...
54:16
I don't know if I've convinced you already that 10:00 PM is lights out.
54:21
But if that hasn't, I'll tell you one more thing.
54:25
The best quality of sleep happens before midnight. Okay?
54:29
Two hours of sleep before midnight is worth more than four hours of sleep after midnight.
54:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Cite your sources there for me, if you wouldn't mind.
54:42
Louisa Nicola: Oh, no, this is all deep-rooted in literature, actually. Satchin Panda.
54:47
He is a wonderful, wonderful neurobiologist, and he's actually one of the leading experts on circadian rhythms, and he was the one that founded the melanopsin cells.
54:57
So everything I'm speaking about comes from the scientific literature.
55:02
I can actually send you all these sources, but he was the one who actually said that this is what happens during those times, and he was the one that I quote.
55:11
He mentioned that two hours before midnight is more than four hours after midnight. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Huh.
55:18
Louisa Nicola: So you really have to think of this and think, "Okay, then why am I sleeping?
55:25
Why can't I just put the habits in place to sleep before then? Why? Is it the fact that..." Even if you are...
55:35
I sleep my athletes, and I'm putting it out there.
55:38
I sleep deprive them just so they can build up enough adenine in the night so then they can fall asleep so...
55:45
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
55:51
I want to sell you on this. Have I? Jim O'Shaughnessy: No. Louisa Nicola: Okay.
55:55
You're still not going to sleep before 10:00 PM. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
56:01
I'm going to think about it.
56:02
I'm going to read your research when you send it to me.
56:05
I am very heavily swayed by empirical evidence. That's the way I invest. Right?
56:11
Louisa Nicola: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
56:12
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So I'm a quant, which makes it easy for me because I don't have to worry about what's in my portfolio because we build algorithms and models to select our securities and they're all based on historical evidence over many, many market cycles.
56:24
But I'm interested enough that I would enjoy it if you would send me this research because I am a research junkie and I just...
56:34
Listen, if you are able to convince, especially portfolio managers, this is the one where I could see like if I was an elite athlete, I'd probably be much more easy to convince about that because... Right?
56:50
I have a limited shelf life as the athlete unless I'm Tom Brady. Right?
56:57
So I'm going to focus very, very much because of that shelf life.
57:03
Portfolio manager is not so much.
57:05
They don't have the limited shelf life for the most part and they tend to be unique. Let's put it that way.
57:13
Louisa Nicola: Well, let me ask you a question.
57:14
I'm going to throw this on your side. How do you explain?
57:17
Because I spoke at The MoneyShow in Vegas a couple of months ago and I pulled up a patient X profile and I said, "I had a portfolio come in and see me. He was 50 years old.
57:29
He had a decline in his performance."
57:31
So he's 50 million in assets management. Is that correct?
57:35
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Uh-huh (affirmative).
57:36
Louisa Nicola: Is that how you say it? So he had 50 million.
57:38
He had a decline in his performance.
57:39
He assessed his strategies.
57:40
He couldn't understand what was going on and this is... He evaluated the market.
57:46
It wasn't based on algorithms.
57:48
It was a decline in his ability to make good decisions.
57:53
Now, Jim, is that something that you've ever seen before?
57:57
Somebody like a portfolio manager just with the inability taking out algorithms, the inability to make sound decisions or they're making the wrong decisions that are leading to a decline in their performance.
58:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, again, I'll give you the answer, but I'm probably the wrong person to ask this because one of the benefits being a quantitative investor is all of the deep thinking decision making, that goes on at the model building level. Right? Louisa Nicola: Okay.
58:34
Jim O'Shaughnessy: We also pay no attention to n equals one. Right? Louisa Nicola: Okay.
58:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So okay, yeah, sure.
58:45
Sam declined and he declined because he was on a bender and didn't sleep for three days or whatever. Well, okay. That's n equals one.
58:59
That doesn't say anything about the huge class that we would require, and I'm sure you do too, when you're looking at empirical studies. Right?
59:10
If I'm looking at medical studies, I want to see huge sample sizes.
59:15
I want to see placebo effects.
59:17
I want to see all of this, and so that, to me, is an anecdotal approach, which is by the way, a good way to get people to understand what you're talking about. Right? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
59:34
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Because I used to joke that I tell stories to tell people why they shouldn't pay attention to stories when they're making investments. Louisa Nicola: Oh, yeah.
59:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: It's in our base code as human beings, stories.
59:46
Reading is relatively recent. Right?
59:48
So you actually had an interesting thing on Gilgamesh.
59:49
For people who are not familiar with that, Gilgamesh, at least so far, it's the oldest piece of wonderful, epic poetry, Sumerian poetry.
59:51
So yes, I have seen situations where because of external environmental effects, somebody is not at his or her best, but one of the things that our process does is actually minimize that. Right?
1:00:07
Because our models don't care...
1:00:10
Our models never get hung over.
1:00:12
They never fight with their spouse.
1:00:14
They never only get two hours of sleep. Louisa Nicola: Okay.
1:00:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right?
1:00:18
They just continually run.
1:00:19
I mean, at a party, they'd be really boring. Right?
1:00:23
But one of the primary reasons for the efficacy of long-tested, empirically-tested over a variety of market cycles, models is that they just keep applying consistently the same criteria. Right?
1:00:40
So we are less, and by the way, I am not saying that artists don't exist. They do.
1:00:48
George Soros and his back. Louisa Nicola: Oh, yeah.
1:00:51
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's a classic story, which I believe, by the way. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
1:00:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I just don't have that back. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
1:00:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So to guard against what I think are a set of very daunting human behavioral ticks, if you will, that are built into our genetic structure, into our lore, into everything we do. Right?
1:01:18
That caused big mistakes to be made in investing, and we try to correct for those, but back to the thing at hand, so let's say, let's make believe. Okay? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
1:01:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So let's make believe that I'm an artist in terms of the way I select stocks. Louisa Nicola: Okay.
1:01:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right?
1:01:43
I would probably be far more responsive and open to you if I came to you and I'm like, "Louisa, oh my God, I was so great for so long and now I really suck." You know? Louisa Nicola: Yup.
1:01:59
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So then you're probably going to be able to convince me with the 10:00 PM. What? Go ahead.
1:02:07
Louisa Nicola: How about the people involved in...
1:02:10
Obviously, there's employees that you bring on. You know?
1:02:14
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
1:02:15
Louisa Nicola: So you're saying that everything that you are doing, you're minimizing the human attributes that cause things such as mental mistakes, I call them, or even emotional mistakes, or you take the emotion out of and you let the computer, which doesn't have emotions, which is just logic.
1:02:32
You let that run your game to invest in stocks.
1:02:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Correct. Louisa Nicola: Okay. So we obviously...
1:02:39
Let's move on to somebody who is...
1:02:42
Okay, so then who is somebody...
1:02:44
Because I have portfolio managers who are doing the decisions who do say to me, "Louisa, if I make the wrong mistake or if I make a wrong decision, I can cost this family who I'm taking care of their money, X, Y, Z." That's predominant... That's what I'm...
1:03:01
I would say early in my financial coaching career.
1:03:04
I haven't yet come across a quant, and now I know.
1:03:08
I'll put on the website, "Do not contact me if you are a quant."
1:03:13
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I've wrecked it for all the quants out there. Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
1:03:17
You have completely just slashed my bottom line. So that's a good thing.
1:03:23
I'm going to get my team on that, but let's take this guy consideration, the one that I brought on board, portfolio manager, $50 million dollars, declining performances, assessed the strategy, looked at the in environment, couldn't understand what was going on. Did a brain scan on him.
1:03:40
Now with the brain scan, the reason why we know... Okay.
1:03:44
When it says your visual acuity or your reaction time is at this...
1:03:48
It doesn't just give you a number. It doesn't just say 0. 3.
1:03:52
It gives you where you are in line with other people, and that's because of what we call a normative database. It takes in...
1:03:59
They've already gone and done millions of scans, and so they've said people at your age should be achieving this.
1:04:05
When I did a scan on this 50-year-old, it showed that he had the brain of a 72-year-old. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Ouch.
1:04:11
Louisa Nicola: I said, "This is why, okay?
1:04:14
You are making poor decisions because your reaction time, the latency, it's so delayed.
1:04:23
that there is something going wrong.
1:04:23
” So, when we look at this and we see okay, the brain of somebody 20 years older than you, why?
1:04:30
Over time, guess what he's been doing?
1:04:32
Apart from the occasional smoking and probably bad eating behavior, over time he sleeping at 1:00 AM.
1:04:41
He said, "Louise, this is my life. I sleep." He's now 50.
1:04:45
If you're sleeping at 1:00 AM and sometimes you're sleeping for five hours, more often than not five or six hours, this in medical literature is sleep deprivation. What happens?
1:04:57
You already know what compound interest is.
1:04:59
Compound interest is for the good and the bad, if you keep investing a dollar each day, compounding, evidently goes up.
1:05:06
It also happens you have compound interest on sleep deprivation.
1:05:10
Nothing might happen to your brain or body if you sleep deprive yourself for one or two days. Okay.
1:05:17
But what happens if you do this consistently, day after day after day, you just get an accumulation of all of these bad things because you're just not allowing the brain to get into these deep sleep patterns that where you get the human growth hormone release, where you get the suppression of cortisol, where you get all of these natural things that happen during sleep.
1:05:36
So, over time, over a 20 or 30 year period, your brain you've just deteriorated at a rapid rate.
1:05:44
By the way, this is how cancer is formed as well.
1:05:47
You have one out of control cell.
1:05:49
If you don't stop it, which is very hard because we don't feel that one tiny cell, what happens over time?
1:05:55
Metastasizes, it goes out of control, and then that leads to malignancy and then evidently a death.
1:06:01
So, this is how things are formed and they're formed over time.
1:06:05
So, when we looked at that and we can then put in a sleep optimization protocol amongst other things, we can then re-scan his brain in four months, which then provides this is the reason actually why I believe I do so well and never had an angry client.
1:06:26
And I would say 98% of our clients ask to just keep going. Okay.
1:06:31
Even though I say no, it's for four months and then you can go out into the world and do your own thing.
1:06:35
It's because I provide them with a start point, a baseline measurements in month one, and then I do them exact same measurements and they can see for themselves here is what the program did for you.
1:06:47
And they see a difference, they're like, wow.
1:06:51
So, that's what I'm saying.
1:06:53
Let's look at the reaction time and let's make better decisions and then see what that does for your bottom line.
1:06:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, I love that.
1:07:00
I think that giving feedback in a systematic way helps the person that you're working with.
1:07:08
You see something tangible and that again also affects their willingness to continue down that path, et cetera.
1:07:19
So, it's definitely a fly of what we would call a positive flywheel, right?
1:07:25
As it starts spinning, it just keeps going and going and if you can do that, you can do great things with both individuals, with companies, with models, with a bunch of things.
1:07:37
So, but I still think that I'm impressed that you've been able to sell 10:00 AM to a lot of people.
1:07:47
I mean- Louisa Nicola: And PM.
1:07:49
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I mean 10:00 PM, right? Sorry.
1:07:51
10:00 AM would be an interesting one.
1:07:53
Let me ask you, naps, what's your position on naps?
1:07:56
Louisa Nicola: I'm not in agreeance with naps because here's what happens.
1:08:01
We have this thing called sleep pressure.
1:08:04
It builds up during the day.
1:08:05
When we have a lot of sleep pressure makes us sleepy at night.
1:08:09
If we then go and block that sleep pressure by having a nap, we're not going to feel sleepy at night.
1:08:15
And you're going to muck your night time routine up.
1:08:20
So, I try and advocate for no naps.
1:08:24
However, LeBron James, notorious for his sleep schedule, he agrees with naps. He likes to have naps.
1:08:30
He says, "I'll sleep wherever I can".
1:08:32
This guy's sleeping like 13 hours a night, 12 to 13 hours a night. So, yeah.
1:08:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, what would you say to like Edison, Thomas Edison?
1:08:43
I mean that's his myth, right?
1:08:46
That everything he did was because he was able to take so many naps.
1:08:50
He only slept two hours a night.
1:08:52
He would keep a ball bearing in his hand because he didn't want to get into too deep a sleep when he was napping.
1:08:58
And if he got into a deep sleep, he would drop the ball bearing, which would wake him up. What about those guys? Are they just anomalies? Louisa Nicola: Yeah.
1:09:08
And how did Thomas Edison die?
1:09:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I have no idea. I haven't looked it up. He was old. I think he was old.
1:09:14
Let's look it up right now.
1:09:15
Louisa Nicola: The reason why I say that is because there's just so many well-known scientists and inventors who ended up either talking to a bird or befriending a pigeon, falling in love with a pigeon or cutting their ear off.
1:09:29
So, before I make any claims, I'd like to know how he died.
1:09:32
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, what's really interesting about that by the way is, oh, this is going to go right into your wheelhouse. He died in 1931.
1:09:43
I got to forget his age, but complications of diabetes.
1:09:51
You get a win on this one.
1:09:52
Louisa Nicola: Come on now.
1:09:53
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Win on this one.
1:09:54
Louisa Nicola: Come on now. I love that.
1:09:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I like that.
1:09:59
You what's really interesting is that when you study like great scientists, great artists, they're really similar and they are Abby Normal.
1:10:11
And I mean that by the way, as a compliment, I do not mean that as a criticism.
1:10:17
It's kind of like I often ask if I'm talking about art, the question what would Van Gogh have been like if he'd been on Prozac, right?
1:10:25
There would be no- Louisa Nicola: SSRI. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:10:29
If he was on an SSRI, he probably would've said, "you know the sunflowers, I just like looking at them. Oh, that sun.
1:10:39
Yeah, it looks pretty nice."
1:10:41
So, I love this about Edison.
1:10:43
I need to find out how old he was.
1:10:46
This is a first for us too by the way, looking up stuff.
1:10:49
Louisa Nicola: I really want this to actually I'm going to get my crew to cut this section out and we're going to put this on. Okay.
1:10:57
We're going to say at the beginning of the conversation, we weren't on that 10:00 PM bandwagon.
1:11:02
I mentioned to you that during those times you get the suppression of the pancreas, but I'll let you bathe on that.
1:11:11
So, now that we know the cause of his death, maybe he was young. Okay.
1:11:17
How do I now feel [crosstalk].
1:11:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Oh, was it now? Sorry. He was 84 years old.
1:11:23
For that time, he was born in 1847.
1:11:25
To die at 84, oh now that was a bit for his time.
1:11:33
Are you going to cut this part out?
1:11:35
Louisa Nicola: Absolutely not because longevity is different. Oh God. You [quants].
1:11:41
It's going to be a very, very big red mark on the website. No [quants].
1:11:44
Jim O'Shaughnessy: We're incorrigible. Louisa Nicola: Yes.
1:11:47
I know you guys are just, I love it though because I could spend my entire time convincing you.
1:11:54
But in saying that it's look what I believe he was gaining from that is there is a very well known study done on rats to show that micro sleeps, these micro sleeps were done in 20 minute forms enabled for better learning.
1:12:12
So, what they fed was that you increase your learning capacity right after you take a nap and then if you take a nap straight away.
1:12:20
So, it was a wonderful study and it showed that if you go and learn something, let's just say that you are learning a new language or you're learning math. Okay.
1:12:30
You go and learn math and then you quickly go to sleep, you take a 20 minute nap.
1:12:35
It was between 12 to 20 minute nap, you have acceleration of learning in that timeframe.
1:12:42
So, do we all have time to do a 20 minute micro nap, four or five or 10 times during the day? I don't think so.
1:12:50
So, I'm still on the bandwagon of naps are pretty much only acceptable if you really need it and if you don't have any sleep problems, that's the thing. That's the caveat.
1:13:00
If you're having sleep problems at night and you're like, I just can't seem to fall asleep, then I would advocate against naps. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:13:07
So, I don't nap if you are curious about that because I am that guy, if he takes a nap, does not sleep the next night or that night. Sorry. This is fun.
1:13:20
You also have some things that people just listening could implement, right?
1:13:27
So, one of the things that you say is you fasting might help, preventing inflammation very important, and you mentioned the drug Metformin and you also mentioned L-Tyro- Louisa Nicola: Tyrosine. Yeah. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:13:49
So, I know much more about this stuff than I should just because I'm a lunatic. Yeah.
1:13:57
My doctor whenever he sees me coming he's like, "oh my God I've got to put up with all of his research". I'm a research junkie.
1:14:05
But I knew about Metformin and I knew about L-Tyrosine.
1:14:10
Maybe you could help our listeners with why those might be beneficial.
1:14:13
Louisa Nicola: Well so Metformin, this is a primarily I mean I don't know if you've ever taken it, but it's now being used as a performance or a longevity drug.
1:14:26
And I don't know, there hasn't been any studies on humans to really put into place to see this helps with longevity.
1:14:36
We've got like sound evidence that this is going to increase your lifespan, but I'm seeing a lot of this is primarily used for somebody who's been diagnosed with diabetes and this drug amongst other drugs are now being used to you increase the lifespan.
1:14:51
And it comes from the fact that there is a very famous study that was done that showed that there are nine hallmarks of aging. Okay.
1:15:00
It's a wonderful paper and I'll send it to you.
1:15:02
Now, it gets quoted every day.
1:15:04
This is how technology is being invented.
1:15:07
Now that we know that there are nine hallmarks of aging, the things that mess us up and how we reverse our aging, how we're literally dying young.
1:15:17
If we now know this, what can we do to reverse?
1:15:19
And they found that Metformin, this drug can be used to help in that aging process.
1:15:26
But another one that I really want to put out there is you mentioned earlier inflammation.
1:15:30
And I think this is a very big one. Okay.
1:15:35
Inflammation to you and to a lot of people may mean, okay, when you go and hurt your leg and your leg is all inflamed.
1:15:45
Or when you're running, you feel like you've got inflamed legs.
1:15:49
We've got this misconception that inflammation is a bad thing.
1:15:54
We're seeing so many people just taking Advils all the time, which is an NSAID to really block that inflammation, so we don't have any pain.
1:16:01
But inflammation is very- Jim O'Shaughnessy: Not a good idea. Louisa Nicola: No.
1:16:05
Inflammation, Jim is very misunderstood.
1:16:07
Inflammation is pretty much it's that process where not enough of it is bad and but too much of it, which is called chronic inflammation is also bad.
1:16:16
That's one of the nine hallmarks, increased inflammation can lead to many, many detrimental diseases.
1:16:24
We've seen it in cancer, we're also seeing it in people who have got clinical depression.
1:16:30
So, anybody who's got clinical depression, it's been shown that they have elevated biomarkers of inflammation.
1:16:37
Basically they draw the blood of individuals who have got inflammation and they're on an SSRI, such as a Prozac.
1:16:44
And they found that they have higher levels of inflammation than somebody who has not been diagnosed with depression.
1:16:48
So, there's a link there.
1:16:50
There's also a link between not being able to think straight and being angry and having headaches.
1:16:56
A lot of this can be caused by neural inflammation, the inflammation that's in your nervous system.
1:17:03
We focus and your athletics a lot of how can normalize, not decrease.
1:17:08
I'm not talking about the getting rid of it.
1:17:11
We need inflammation in small doses.
1:17:13
How can we just get it under the under control so, we don't lead to sleep fragmentation, poor sleep behavior?
1:17:21
How can we normalize inflammation, so you can just feel better and you can perform for longer?
1:17:27
And of the things that we do to normalize that, which I'm sure you've read is we get a lot of our athletes to jump in an ice bath. Okay. Love ice, love cold.
1:17:38
Huge and I don't know if you've been convinced on this yet, but it's actually incredible.
1:17:44
It's deep root in the scientific literature that taking ice bath or even what it's called cold immersion, helps you in so many different ways.
1:17:52
So, that's one way that we get inflammation under control.
1:17:55
And another way is the complete opposite, getting in an infrared sauna. There you go. And yeah, so yeah.
1:18:03
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, I have read about both of those.
1:18:09
My poor long suffering wife has to put up with my desire to put in saunas, ice baths, red lights.
1:18:15
Louisa Nicola: You've got one?
1:18:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Not currently, we are arguing about said installation of both sauna and ice bath.
1:18:28
And I don't know if you're familiar with the Joovv, the red light.
1:18:31
So, I do have one of those and I'm a big self experimenter and that drives her crazy.
1:18:41
But to your point about both, there is very deep scientific literature on this.
1:18:49
And so, that was one of the reasons why I think that's a great idea and I'm happy you're doing it with your athletes.
1:19:00
This has been so much fun.
1:19:02
We are already at five minutes over my normal length of one of these.
1:19:07
So, I'm going to ask you one other question.
1:19:10
And then we're going to go to the closing question.
1:19:13
This has been really interesting and eye opening.
1:19:17
What do you think are the most destructive myths around performance, around all the things that athletes do or don't do?
1:19:27
We didn't even get to The Inner Game of Tennis, which is a book I love for completely different reasons, right?
1:19:35
But maybe when you come back on, we'll be able to have that conversation.
1:19:40
But right now let's leave our listeners with kind of like there's so much misinformation.
1:19:48
I would argue that people are going to be much better served by people like you, by people who are experts in what they're doing than listicle because the listicles are generally probably not going to be backed by a lot of deep, deep research.
1:20:07
So, give me what you think are in the literature.
1:20:11
What are one of the most destructive nonsensical things that people actually still believe? Louisa Nicola: Okay.
1:20:19
Well some people still believe, which is shocking to me that you only need six hours of sleep per night.
1:20:27
A lot of people say to me, "well I get by just fine with six hours of sleep per night".
1:20:32
That's one of the biggest myths that is so detrimental to life, I believe.
1:20:38
And I'm not going to even delve into it because we've gone too far, but it's that I do see a myth of sleep and performance. Okay.
1:20:46
So, let's get that out up.
1:20:47
The second thing is there is an aspect of performance that we all believe in and it's another big myth and that is that we have muscle memory.
1:20:55
And this- Jim O'Shaughnessy: This is the one I wanted to talk about. Yeah, I like this one.
1:20:59
Louisa Nicola: So, and I always say this, Jim, I say, "unlike octopi or octopus's, I don't really know the- Jim O'Shaughnessy: I think it's octopi.
1:21:05
Yeah, I think you're right. Louisa Nicola: Octopi.
1:21:07
We don't have brains in our limbs.
1:21:10
Muscle tissue does not have a memory of past exercise training.
1:21:14
The parts of the brain responsible for movement is mainly in this area called the motor cortex.
1:21:21
And what happens is the reason why we have our muscles don't have little brains.
1:21:25
What happens is our motor cortex sends signals to our muscles to produce an action.
1:21:31
And the more times it does that, the more times we go down these neural highways, the more times that this pathway gets known.
1:21:38
So, it's not muscle memory.
1:21:39
It is literally neural memory.
1:21:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well it's a reinforced through repetition neural network that gets stronger and stronger and stronger.
1:21:51
Louisa Nicola: Yeah, you're definitely on the ball game with that one. Okay.
1:21:57
Let's move on to the next one.
1:21:59
And this is a performance myth as well, and that is I don't get thirsty, so I don't really need to hydrate. Okay.
1:22:08
Huge myth or I don't need to take electrolytes. I don't exercise. I don't sweat that much.
1:22:14
Jim, our brain okay, is made up of nerve cells. They're called neurons.
1:22:22
We have anywhere from 80 billion to a hundred billion neurons. You have them. I have them.
1:22:27
Unless we've got a bad brain pathology.
1:22:30
Now these neurons, so they communicate with each other.
1:22:34
When they communicate with each other, we produce thoughts, actions, everything, that's how we live.
1:22:41
The only way that they produce an action potential, which is when they fire together is through this thing called a sodium potassium pump.
1:22:52
Sodium and potassium and calcium, these things that are needed to just produce a thought are electrolytes.
1:22:59
And we see a massive decline in performance including reaction time, thinking, decision making when we are as little as 1% dehydrated. So, that's a huge myth.
1:23:10
You should be getting enough electrolytes, even having sea salt in your water to help you perform better, think faster, live longer.
1:23:20
Now the only next myth I'm going to leave you with because I know on a time constraint is when you're exercising Jim, you're exercising hard and you feel this burn in your legs and you think it's called lactic acid.
1:23:32
The burn is not caused by lactic acid.
1:23:36
It's actually caused by heat.
1:23:38
So, heat limits performance, not lactic acid.
1:23:41
So, if anybody's out there and they're listening and they're like I just want to be able to cycle for longer or run for longer without getting that burn, that lactic acid buildup, it's not lactic acid.
1:23:52
It's just your muscles heating up.
1:23:54
That's all you're feeling, you know when you touch a hot stove.
1:23:56
So, if you want to increase your longer runs or you want to be able to perform at that high speed, we do a lot of things like we'll put an ice pack on our athletes, they'll do a set and then we put ice packs all over them to cool them down immediately and then get back on the bike.
1:24:11
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So cool.
1:24:12
Well this has been fantastic.
1:24:15
So, first off we're going to have it in the show notes, but tell everyone that's listening where we can reach you and find your stuff.
1:24:24
Louisa Nicola: So, there's two ways.
1:24:27
One, I have a great podcast.
1:24:29
It's called The Neuro Experience.
1:24:31
We've got over 250 episodes and then we also have our Sub Stack or the newsletter.
1:24:39
It's a weekly newsletter and that is called Neuro Athletics.
1:24:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Perfect.
1:24:45
And so, the last question that we ask everyone, I think I'm going to take a guess because I think I'm going to know maybe one of yours, but let's see if I'm right.
1:24:54
What we ask people is we're going to wave a wand and we're going to make you the Empress of the world for one day.
1:25:02
But you can't kill anybody, you can't put anybody in a camp, but you can incept them so, that they wake up the next day if you know about Wu Wei and Daoism, this is kind of what we're getting after here.
1:25:16
They're going to wake up the next day and think that it's their idea that they do two things that they might have never done in the past.
1:25:26
What two things would you them with?
1:25:30
Louisa Nicola: I think you know what they're going to be.
1:25:35
The one is sleeping from the hours, sleeping at a minimum of eight hours, I would say and sleeping at the right times, which is the 10:00 PM till 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM.
1:25:49
That would be the first thing.
1:25:52
And then the second thing I would say is it's so broad, but it would definitely be minimizing. Okay.
1:26:01
Let's say this, getting rid of completely refined sugar from the diet.
1:26:08
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Oh, amen.
1:26:12
I sometimes stumble, but I have equated sugar with poison for a long, long time. So, I like that belief.
1:26:22
Louisa Nicola: Yeah, I almost said alcohol but I thought, no.
1:26:26
Well if we're going to eliminate refined sugar, then they're going to get rid of alcohol. So, lets just do that.
1:26:30
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's right. That's very smart. I like that.
1:26:33
There's so many things that they need to get rid of.
1:26:34
Well this has been so much fun, so much information.
1:26:38
I wish you all the greatest success with both your athletes and with our probably more difficult portfolio managers and I hope to see you again soon.
1:26:52
Louisa Nicola: Thank you so much for having me Jim. It's been of blast.