#851: Dr. Tommy Wood — How to Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia

**Tim Ferriss** (0:00)
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview world-class performers to tease out how they do what they do, or to tease out the frameworks, the specifics, the practical tactical that you can apply to your own lives. This episode I've been trying to set up for a while. My guest is Dr. Tommy Wood. He is an associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington, where his research focuses on brain health across the lifespan. This includes therapies for brain injury in newborns, prevention and treatment of adult brain trauma, and the factors that contribute to long-term cognitive function and cognitive decline. It turns out there's a lot that you can actually do. It is not an inexorable decline into not recognizing your family. There's actually quite a bit from the perspective of lifestyle, supplementation and much more that you can do to try to stack the odds in your favor, cognitively speaking. Tommy received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, a medical degree from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in physiology and neuroscience from the University of Oslo. Alongside his academic work, Tommy is head scientist for motorsport at HINSA Performance, overseeing health and performance programs for multiple Formula One drivers. He works with a lot of professional athletes. He is also trained and competed in multiple sports himself, coming in the top 20 in the world for the world's first ever fully offered Ironman Triathlon and second at Washington's Strongest Man in 2024 Tommy is one of a kind. He's also co-host of the Better Brain Fitness podcast and author of the forthcoming book, The Stimulated Mind, which I encourage people to check out. His website is drtommywood.com with a D-R, Dr. Tommy Wood. drtommywood.com. You can find him on Instagram at DrTommyWood, also dr at DrTommyWood. And without further ado, please enjoy a very wide ranging, very, very concrete conversation with Dr. Tommy Wood. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. Nice to see you.

**Tommy Wood** (2:32)
Nice to see you.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:32)
Thanks for making the time.

**Tommy Wood** (2:34)
Thanks for having me.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:34)
Absolutely, and as mentioned before we started recording, this is just gonna be like our last conversation because I wanted to reach out to you because cognition, cognition, cognition, boy oh boy is that on the mind, and pun intended on one level, but we are gonna bounce all over the place, and I hope to give people, including myself, a lot of tactical, practical recommendations, also being clear where the science is solid and where the science is maybe a little thinner ice, right? Or where something is plausible but not yet proven out. And you've got me chewing xylitol gum, you got me looking at air purifiers, but I'm skipping ahead. Let's go back to the beginning, and I want to give the good old Dr. Chatterjee a nod here because it came up in a conversation you had with him, and I was like, wow, I never would have thought of that. Why are human babies so plump? Why are they so fat compared to other species?

**Tommy Wood** (3:34)
If you look at human babies compared to pretty much every other mammalian species, we are the only species that's born fat even compared to other primates. It's thought that the primary reason for this is that that fat is a repository for things that the brain needs in order to develop. The two that are probably most interesting to you, and seems to be particularly important, are DHA, the omega-3 fatty acid, and fats as a source of ketones for the brain. When the brain is developing in particular, I think this is also very relevant to recovery from brain injuries and other states. The preferred synthetic precursor, as in the thing that the brain uses to make structure, like fats and cholesterol and that kind of stuff, which makes up a significant chunk of the brain. Ketones are the preferred source, particularly in the developing brain, but I think also later on in various states as an adult. And so in order to support that very hungry brain, which it is particularly in humans, we're born fat so that we can generate a bunch of ketones to support that brain developing for the first, especially for the first few weeks, but maybe even for months after that.

**Tim Ferriss** (4:50)
Also, I have lots of, as I understand it, that beautiful bat brown adipose tissue to keep those little hairless monkeys warm. Yeah. All right, so we're gonna talk about, because I think the, in a sense, the extremes inform the mean, but not the other way around. So we can talk about certain maybe edge cases, things that people might not view as immediately relevant to themselves. But since we're talking about newborns, I'm curious, you've looked at therapies, various types of research into brain injury in newborns. What do you do? What can you do? I mean, what's the state of the art when it comes to treating brain injury in newborns or in infants?