Brain Mapping & Neurofeedback: How Elite Athletes Train Focus, Calm & Performance

Santiago Brand [00:00:00]:
People lie. Their brain doesn’t.

Nick Urban [00:00:03]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance span things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Santiago, welcome to the podcast.

Santiago Brand [00:00:54]:
Hello, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Nick Urban [00:00:56]:
I’m looking forward to this one because brain function, brain health, these are all top of mind, not only to me, but to a lot of people out there. And some people say that the quality of our life is determined by how well our brain is able to function over the long term. What got you interested in the brain specifically?

Santiago Brand [00:01:15]:
This goes back to the year 2007, 2008, when I was doing my graduate studies in sports psychology. I’m a sport and clinical psychologist, and I was doing my graduate studies and my practicum, my internship in sports psychology. And I was not completely satisfied with the traditional methods for training athletes mentally. And I always wonder if there was some way to look more, look deeply and more objectively into the athlete’s mind or the athlete’s brain that goes beyond goal setting and relaxation and imagery and all these traditional methods that work very well. But I wanted to go deeper and interestingly enough, there was a gentleman that came to do a workshop on the topic of biofeedback. So I signed up for the workshop and when we are there, he starts taking out all this equipment and he starts hooking people out, looking at breath rate, brain waves again. To me, that was love. For me, it was love at first sight.

Nick Urban [00:02:20]:
For people who’ve never heard of it, what would you say biofeedback is? How would you simply define that?

Santiago Brand [00:02:25]:
Biofeedback is a mirror that uses technology as a way to show you how your body reacts to stress or joy or happiness or distress or bereavement. It shows you how your physiological responses, your skin conductance, which is the sweating on the palm of the hand, your breath rate, your heart rate, your temperature, your muscle tension, how all these variables change in reaction to a negative stimulation or positive stimulation, and how it can be used to enhance your performance in your health. And how it can help you heal from different conditions that could be stemming from stress, stemming from trauma, stemming from negative emotions. A lot of things that are affecting people we can help optimize through biofeedback. And the most important thing is a non invasive procedure. Nothing is going into the body. We just place a superficial sensors to, to track your physiology and help you adjust it. So you look at a screen and you have movie, you have video game and you learn to control that with your own body responses.

Santiago Brand [00:03:34]:
The neurofeedback works the same way, is the same concept, but with the brain waves. So we can measure your brain waves, which is the electrical activity of your brain. And we can train you, we can coach you to manipulate those brain waves that will, which brings about changes in focus, inattention, in sleep, in emotion and in behavior. And therefore you can be a peak performance individual, like an athlete or a CEO. And if you want to perform better, you can train your brain. If you’re a student who’s struggling, if you’re a housewife who’s struggling, if you are a lawyer who’s struggling, if you’re a human being who’s struggling through life due to a variety of reasons, you can train your brain and optimize your brain to overcome all these obstacles.

Nick Urban [00:04:20]:
And from my perspective, one of the advantages of this is you change your brain’s baseline state. So say you train your focus for a while, then you don’t need anything and your brain is just better able to tap into focus on demand versus if you use supplements, they can be great, or drugs, they can provide a short term boost, but usually there’s an overcorrection back down and other direction, at least temporarily. And you’re also reliant on having access to whatever it is day in, day out.

Santiago Brand [00:04:48]:
Yeah, I’m very happy you’re bringing that point to the forefront. Because what’s important to understand here is the first element when we train the brain is about self regulation. We need to teach people how to self regulate. And that means that you can perform because there is an alignment in your behaviors, your emotions, your thoughts, meaning everything is aligned. And in spite of stress or anxiety or, or adversity, you can function at a level where you have good management of these elements. That’s self regulation. People self regulate at different levels. We don’t train people to do all the same.

Santiago Brand [00:05:32]:
This is not a one size fits all approach. It’s personalized and it is individualized. We work with your needs, we work with your capacity, we work with your talents. We work with your, with the possibilities. And that’s what’s important to understand. Because people cannot function well unless they’re self regulated. Self regulation is important for everything. If you’re going for a job interview, you need a level of control and management over this.

Santiago Brand [00:06:04]:
If you want to save your marriage, if you want to successfully negotiate a deal, if you want to get an extra edge over your competition in sports, self regulation is the key. And like you’re saying, we tap into that person’s baseline. People come with three levels of arousal or activation. One is the ideal one, they’re doing well, but we can teach them to do better. Number two, they come hypo aroused, they’re tired, they’re unmotivated, they are apathetic. And again, this happens for a variety of reasons. So we need to increase, to motivate, to get more energy, to help them regain joy and pleasure and things in life to get purpose again. And then you have people who are hyper or overly aroused.

Santiago Brand [00:06:53]:
And these are the individuals who have ongoing anxiety for no reason. Sometimes they are angry, they are resentful, they are dwelling on the past. And on that same token, we can lower the arousal to an optimal and ideal level so they can function now. It doesn’t mean that stress goes away, it doesn’t mean that the hardships of life go away. But what it means is that you can learn to navigate them more efficiently. So things that stress you before do not stress you as much or don’t stress you at all. People who upset you or comments that upset you before don’t do that anymore. It’s reframing how you navigate the world, your relationship with life and the environment.

Santiago Brand [00:07:38]:
And that’s the key point of the brain training. And anybody who has a brain can achieve that. That’s the whole point. People ask me who benefits from this? And I will say anybody who has a brain.

Nick Urban [00:07:49]:
Yeah, so we’ve touched a bit about on neurofeedback and that’s training the brain, basically holding up a mirror to it so that we can see, not see, but understand what’s going on and help it access desired states more easily on demand. The other one you hinted at, you mentioned a couple. One is heart rate variability biofeedback, HRV heart coherence training. You also mentioned galvanic sweat response. I think skin response, sweat response. What are the main categories of biofeedback?

Santiago Brand [00:08:18]:
The main one is heart rate variability. HRV biofeedback in is cost efficient once you learn it is free, because breathing is free and you can apply it anytime. The main purpose with the training that we do in self regulation is that the individual can generalize this, which means they can apply it at any moment, at any time. More specifically, during pressure modes, what we call pressure modes, it’s very easy to be relaxed in your beach in Bali and there’s nothing bothering you. That’s not the point. The point is that you can relax if you have the boss berating you for no reason and you can confidently have a conversation with them without being aggressive or being submissive. If your spouse is creating problems at home, that you can self regulate and bring conversation to an amicable conversation, an amicable resolution. That’s the point.

Santiago Brand [00:09:17]:
It’s to learn to self regulate when the pressure is high. And we teach people to make it, to generalize it and also to make it automatic second nature. Just like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth, it becomes muscle memory with repetition. The whole objective is to reframe this. And high reverability is essential because it works. The connection and the communication between the heart and the brain. The heart and the brain are constantly communicating. And many times this is what people don’t understand, I think.

Santiago Brand [00:09:58]:
And that’s where your question is very important. Many times emotions affect the heart first and then the brain. And sometimes the focus is first on the brain and the rest of the organism. The rest of the body gets neglected. We should focus first on the heart, because the communication between the heart and the brain is 95% of the communication goes from the heart to the brain, and only 5% goes from the brain to the heart. Which means that in many ways the heart has a larger influence and more management of these emotions than the brain does. And through breath work, very easy to implement, learn and execute breath work. You can change the rhythmicity of the heart, which means how the heart beats and how it moves, which then influences the brain.

Santiago Brand [00:10:53]:
And it’s very simple. Again, anybody can do it. If you want to lower your anxiety, you can do heart rate variability. If you want to control and match your anger and be less reactive, you can start with heart rate variability. You want to sleep better, you can start with heart rate variability. And as I said, it’s really easy to learn, it’s cost efficient, and once you implement it, the best thing is that it’s free. And that’s the most powerful biofeedback mentality. Now, the other ones can also be as powerful.

Santiago Brand [00:11:24]:
For example, temperature. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Nick Urban [00:11:26]:
Before we go into that, I want to explore that particular breathwork modality. But even before that you mentioned that the heart registers the changes before the brain. So say my brain, you say something, it causes me to feel a certain way and have like biological changes go on in my body. My brain, say, takes 300 milliseconds to register and process it. Does that mean that my heart would actually show some kind of changes after 100 to 200 milliseconds, just faster than the brain.

Santiago Brand [00:11:53]:
It normally does it faster. And we been able to measure this in that you can connect somebody to the EEG cap and then run the ekg, the heart rate. The heart rate and the heart rate variability at the same time simultaneously. And you can expose people to, say, images. You show them a baby, you show them a car accident, you show them a neutral image, a triangle in the middle of a screen. You show them a natural disaster. And you don’t have them say anything. You don’t tell them anything.

Santiago Brand [00:12:27]:
You just have them watch the pictures for a few seconds at a time. And you will see that the heart produces a specific rhythmicity depending on the image. That means stress has a specific heart signature, bereavement has a specific heart signature, anxiety has a specific heart signature. It’s different for all of these emotions. And the way they impact the brain is also unique once you learn to identify it. When you teach people to breathe, you’re doing the preemptive strike, which means once the negative emotion comes in, because the rhythmicity is already there, you have the resilience for won’t have the same impact or any impact at all on you. That’s the key element here, is that we can objectively and scientifically measure this. We have technology that can evidence this.

Santiago Brand [00:13:16]:
Now, many years ago, this was thought of as the new era or, you know, snake oil. Now it’s a scientific fact. And going beyond the science is something that we can demonstrate that we can measure, that we can compare, that we can track over and over again with individuals throughout the world with different pieces of technology. And that’s the key value here.

Nick Urban [00:13:39]:
So when you say that the signature looks the same, so I’m feeling stressed now, or say I feel scared from an image that pops on the screen, Would that be the same when I’m experiencing that feeling of. That experience of being scared? Or is it like a pattern that holds consistent throughout the entire population? Would it look the same for me as for you?

Santiago Brand [00:13:59]:
Not quite. The foundational principle is the same physiologically. But what we find is that across individuals, the signature tends to be unique. Your heart rate variability patterns are as unique as your brain Wiring as unique as your DNA or your fingerprints. No two brains are wired the same way. Just like you know, unless you have identical twins, you have the same DNA, the same set of fingerprints. But even in identical twins, the brain wiring is not the same. And that’s what’s wonderful because it makes us unique individuals and we tap into that uniqueness.

Santiago Brand [00:14:36]:
When you, when somebody comes to work with me, I don’t want to compare them to anybody and I don’t want to train them to be like anybody. I want to train them to be themselves and utilize their unique talents and abilities for their healing and for their optimal performance. This is very common. Athletes, they come and tell me I want to have the mentality of Michael children. And I will say, well you can have some of the same mindset principles, but you will never be like Michael Jordan. Just like Michael Jordan will never be like so and so. They’re unique. And they worked on this set of unique patterns.

Santiago Brand [00:15:17]:
You know, I was, I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger at the other in an interview in his early days and they were asking him about his accent and why he wouldn’t work on reducing his accent. And he says because it makes me unique, it makes me identifiable. It’s worked to my advantage. And so that’s what we want to tap into. When we look at your brain waves, when we look at your heart rhythmicity, when we look at your muscle tension, what makes you unique? And then what possibilities does this bring for you? And then how can you contribute to your life and then to the world at large?

Nick Urban [00:15:55]:
Okay, so you start with training your heart, your heart rate variability. And you mentioned breath as being one of the easiest, most accessible, affordable ways of doing that. Are there any particular breathwork protocols you like? I’d assume it’s breathing at like a slightly different rate for each person. Like I think it’s the resonant frequency heart rate, which is like your unique heart rate that brings you into state of coherence, which is like generally four to six beats breaths per minute. But do you find that in general like say a 4 second in count holding and a 6 second outcount is effective? Like what would you recommend your average person who’s listening in?

Santiago Brand [00:16:31]:
Another very important question, and thank you for asking that. What we can also see is that we can, the technology allows for creativity, meaning there’s not one and only one particular way of working with somebody. You can get creative and you can test different variables and different ways of approaching the train. That goes to your question, which is what is the ideal breathing rate? Well, there are many. And again, what we do is when we connect somebody to the equipment, we run a baseline in which I tell them, just breathe like you normally do. And that gets me to understand how they normally do it. And I will now say, let’s test four seconds in breathing and four seconds out. Exit.

Santiago Brand [00:17:19]:
Now let’s test some individual nostril like they do in Kundalini Yoga. Let’s test Butenko. What I do is I test people with different styles of breathing while I’m measuring the heart rate and the. And the brain activity at the same time. And what I will see is which one does their brain and heart respond to the best? Could be one, could be two or three. And then from there we build up the training. Meaning now that we found which one fits you physiologically, emotionally, behaviorally, let’s go with that. That means that, yes, there are some general breathing techniques that are popular out there.

Santiago Brand [00:18:05]:
It doesn’t mean that they work for everybody. And that’s what’s important to understand here. You can try it, but it could make you feel a little worse. And that’s okay. Doesn’t mean that that is not an efficient breath work method, is just not efficient for your physiology, for the way you’re built, the way you think and the way you feel. Because it’s not just about breathing for breathing’s sake. It’s about integrating how you bring the emotion into it, how you bring the thought into it, how you bring the intention to it, because all of these things are part of you and your daily interactions with the outside world. And we have to incorporate these elements into the training.

Santiago Brand [00:18:44]:
A lot of people do breath work just for doing breath work. And there’s a lot of popular methods. And people go through the cold plunge and they do this type of breathing, which is fine. It works for some people, it doesn’t work for everybody. And therefore, when you create a retreat or a program, go ahead and do that, but just make sure. My suggestion is make sure you’re individualizing the process, what works for each individual.

Nick Urban [00:19:08]:
So is your ideal breath rate something that’s static throughout your lifetime, or is it dynamically changing based on life circumstances, how well rested you are, nutrition, all those types of factors?

Santiago Brand [00:19:21]:
Very good question. It can be dynamic, and that’s the other important thing. When I teach somebody, when I find their specific break style and their specific breath rate, we train for the most part, for throughout their life, that works, and it tends to be static. But the other important element here is the flexibility, which means Life changes. You could have an accident and then as a consequence of the accident, that breathing frequency or that breathing style doesn’t work for you anymore. We need to adjust it. You gained weight, it’s going to change. You lost weight because you got sick is going to change.

Santiago Brand [00:20:01]:
And part of the self regulation is flexibility and adaptability. My principle when I work with people is let’s expect the best, but be prepared for the worst. Let’s always expect that good things are going to happen, but let’s be ready when bad things happen. And how are we going to look at what the possibilities are and how we’re going to mitigate risk and how we’re going to mitigate the impact. It’s very important because I don’t want people to work with the expectation, go out with the expectation that now it’s all nice and dandy and nothing bad will ever happen to them again because that’s not how life works. So they go with the confidence I built the confidence in that they know if something happens they now are able to handle it. And if they crumble and if they’re in despair, it’s okay. But now they’re not going to dwell and stay in that state.

Santiago Brand [00:21:00]:
They’re going to have the skills to overcome. And that’s the whole point. That’s what flexibility and self regulation are all about. And again, it’s an individual process.

Nick Urban [00:21:09]:
We’ve talked a bit about training these different modalities. What does it actually look, sound or feel like to someone who’s going through this?

Santiago Brand [00:21:17]:
Well, we use the word feedback. That’s what’s called neurofeedback or biofeedback. And the feedback comes in the form of screenshots or sounds. Let’s talk about neurofeedback first. A very common neurofeedback trainings with movies or videos. So I put the electrodes, the sensors on your head. Depending on the areas of the brain that I need to train and I’m going to have you watching me, you’re going to be controlling the movie with your brain and your brain alone. You’re not going to be using the keyboard, the mouse or any other external device for that matter.

Santiago Brand [00:21:50]:
You’re going to your remote control at that point is your brain. And once the brain gets engaged with that signal, the process starts. Let’s say I want to teach somebody to relax and become better self regulated. So I’m going to train the SMR brainwaves. SMR brainwaves help you become more focused and mindful in general terms and if they have too many beta waves, they’re going to run high on anxiety, more anxiety than they actually need. But what I will tell the brain is anytime you lower the beta brain waves and you increase the SMR waves, the movie is going to play. This person is sitting there, they have, they’re sitting in a reclined chair, they have a flat screen TV in front of them, they’re getting the whole movie experience and they’re playing and having fun and all of a sudden the movie screen shrinks or the movie stops. That means that at the point the brain, when it’s went in the direction we don’t want it to go, it started to make more beta waves.

Santiago Brand [00:22:49]:
So now that brain is going to say, ah, if I want to keep the movie playing, I have to lower these waves and increase these waves. And that’s how the process goes. And we repeat that over X number of sessions until it becomes second nature. What is happening is that we have changes in neurotransmitters, changes, we have changes in blood flow and we have changes in connectivity. When somebody comes in for anger or poor sleep or depression or social anxiety. When we train the brain, those networks that have been creating these problems that are withering away and the brain creates new connectivity, new patterns. And that new pattern with repetition is that new functionality optimal pattern for that person, hopefully and for the most part for the rest of their life. Once you repeat that is the same with the biofeedback is the same.

Santiago Brand [00:23:50]:
Now you can also do a video game or you can also do sounds. I use sounds frequently to train people to overcome negative stimuli. For example, I’m doing temperature training, put a sensor on the finger and I teach them to bring more blood flow. When they bring more blood flow, it means that the body gets warmer, they’re more relaxed. But if the temperature drops, I will have the system play a very annoying sound and I will tell them you need to self regulate to stop the sound. In the initial part, the client struggles. The reason they struggle is because they want to control self. Regulation is about relinquishing control.

Santiago Brand [00:24:38]:
It’s understanding that you don’t have control over most things. Once you relinquish that control, meaning you’re not consciously trying to make the change, is when you can tap into that power. And it takes some people time. I mean we, most humans, not to say all humans, we’ve been conditioned to control things. We have the false perception that if we consciously control things it’s going to be better. And it’s the complete opposite of that the technology mirrors that for the person and they learn to do it. And because it’s a game, it’s a movie, people have fun while they’re doing it. So it’s enticing to them, it’s engaging.

Santiago Brand [00:25:21]:
And we can make the training progressively harder. We could make it easier and we can play with the variables. That’s the beautiful full thing. So they’re not only doing the same boring thing over and over again. We can make it more boring. Sometimes we can make it more difficult, sometimes we can make it more entertaining or less entertaining.

Nick Urban [00:25:40]:
Is there a sequence of events that makes the most sense to get the most out of these sessions? Like, as I see, it would make sense to do the heart coherence training, the HRV training first, I guess via breath work, and then from there go on to neurofeedback or the GSR biofeedback. But like, are you seeing that, for example, people come in and they generally do best when they do these other things first and then also when they train particular brainwave bands. Or are you seeing that it’s like it’s very variable from one person to the next and there isn’t really a particular sequence that’s most important because as I see it, there isn’t like one autoregulation training mode where like the, the brain fixes anything that’s not working properly. It’s kind of like you have to go and you experiment with these different things to see how they impact your brain uniquely.

Santiago Brand [00:26:32]:
I would say that the first line of work, the weapon of choice to me is always heart rate variability. Okay? And the reason why is because most people don’t know how to breathe correctly. And when I bring this point, there’s always somebody who says, well, but I do how to breathe. I do know how to breathe, because if I don’t breathe, I die. I’ll say, you’re breathing for survival, but you’re not breathing for living. It’s two different processes, two different mechanisms. And I don’t teach people to breathe, I remind them how to breathe. And the reason I say this is if you always look at baby when they’re sleeping, they breathe with their tummy, they don’t breathe with the thorax.

Santiago Brand [00:27:13]:
I’ve never seen a baby that breathes through thorax. When they’re sleeping, you see that their tummy goes up and down. We are born with the ability to breathe properly. It’s just that life happens and we forget how to do it. When I’m teaching heart rate variability, I’m Reminding them how to breathe properly, they reconnect with that process. I find that in 95% of the cases, when they learn how to properly breathe, they achieve large, significant change. Now, I think most people benefit from that, but sometimes I may, depending on the case. In more extreme cases, if people are struggling to learn the breath work because they’re just too caught up in the control, I would start with different things.

Santiago Brand [00:28:04]:
I would start, for example, with the neurofeedback because they just have to sit there and breathe and they learn to tap into the brain power that works for some people. I may use other techniques to just see how I can help people to drop their defenses and connect with themselves. Because I’m there just as a facilitator. I’m not there to judge. I’m not there to push anything. I’m just there to facilitate. Once I facilitate and the client gets going, I just step back and I’m a learner and observant of that process. But across the board, high vulnerability is the one thing that I think everybody needs to learn before anything.

Santiago Brand [00:28:48]:
And that’s where I start with most of my clients. High reverability. And then we go into more biofeedback, or we jump straight into the neurofeedback, or we normally combine these interventions.

Nick Urban [00:29:01]:
If someone has a device that’s capable of measuring heart rate variability, say, continuously, and they were to start a session. I know that you said you like to measure brain activity changes simultaneously, so you get. You can see how both correlate and you want to find the sweet spot where they both are optimal. Are you seeing that generally if your heart rate variability is improving from second to second, that’s a sign that it’s working, or is that only a smaller part of the full picture?

Santiago Brand [00:29:30]:
It can be a small part of the picture, but it can also be significant to the individual. And there is something that is very important to mention here is that, yes, we use wearables, and I provide people and I suggest people wearables that they can track at home. Some people like the watering, some people like the Fitbit, some people use other devices. The key element here is not to get married to the data. It’s very important. Many clients become obsessed with the data, and if they’re not hitting the mark second to second, it’s detrimental. It’s very important to create a process where you’re not depending on the visual feedback and the technology to get the objective going. That being said, wearables are important.

Santiago Brand [00:30:18]:
And tracking the data I support for some people Second to second changes are significant. But for the most part, and for most people we’re not looking at second to second, we’re looking at day to day or week after week. We just compile the data in a way that helps us look at the progress. But the important thing is that people practice the actual skill. So the focus is on the skill, not the result. That’s very important to bring about because when people use wearables they get caught up on the result and that’s detrimental due. As much as I love wearables, I don’t use them myself because I know that if I have the OURA ring, for example, and today my sleep score is 70, that’s going to impact how I feel. You know, I don’t want that carrying overtime.

Santiago Brand [00:31:08]:
I know what I need to do to sleep well and I am conscious that some nights, every now and then I’m going to get poor sleep for many reasons. You know, because I’m sick, because I ate something that didn’t sit well, because it’s hot and the air conditioning is not working because I received bad news. A friend of mine had an accident. Things happen. So I know that I need to do my best and I don’t want to rely on the data. The data is important, but as I always say, one thing is when you see research and then a completely different thing is what you see in the real world. And I think that the overlapping of the two is what’s important. You know, the data is good, but it doesn’t tell you everything.

Santiago Brand [00:31:48]:
What you see in the real world is important, but it doesn’t tell you everything. Now would I suggest people use wearables? Yeah. Every client I work with, I suggest that they get the ordering and we track their sleep and that’s how we track for changes because it tracks the heart re variability. The stress levels is a wonderful device. What I ensure is that they don’t get caught up on the data. The main point here is for our listeners and our viewers is that yes, use your orables, but focus on developing the skill. If you develop the skill, you don’t need the ring, you don’t need a Fitbit. You will know that you’re doing it correctly because it feels right.

Santiago Brand [00:32:27]:
Can you objectively compare it to the data? Yes. But should you rely on the data 100%? No.

Nick Urban [00:32:35]:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m the same way with my OURA ring usage and my now ultra human ring usage. It’s useful, but not necessarily on the day to day level. More on the longer term trend, like the macro level.

Santiago Brand [00:32:50]:
Yes, I completely agree that.

Nick Urban [00:32:52]:
Okay, so we’ve covered some of the different types of biofeedback out there. I also know that you mentioned a second ago, sometimes the things that you see in the research and in the data don’t match up with what you’re seeing in the real world. Are there any particular examples of those that come to mind to you from actually working with clients?

Santiago Brand [00:33:12]:
I have plenty of anecdotal examples in that we have really good results. The problem with more scientific individuals is that because they don’t see the statistical value in this, they tend to discredit this findings or they tend to assign the change to other variables. And I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think that any practitioner out there who’s not a researcher, who doesn’t work in a lab will realistically have the time to collect and publish all the data. It’s impossible. And I don’t think that a client comes in and they’re struggling and they’re doing better. I don’t think we should discredit that just because it’s not published. I agree that what is not published doesn’t exist.

Santiago Brand [00:34:00]:
I do agree with that. My wife is a scientist, she loves publishing, she loves looking at data and I appreciate what people like her do because they bring the science and they change the world through the research. But sometimes we have these discussions in which I go, but yes, I agree, but the data doesn’t tell you everything. Not everything significant at point a P05 on a peer reviewed paper means that’s the only way we need to do it. I have cases, people with epilepsy who now are seizure free, medication free, and these are not published. I’ve had students who were flunking out of school and they went to go to their MBA in Harvard. And this is not published. So we cannot discount this just because it’s not statistically written.

Santiago Brand [00:34:55]:
And again, I think the overlapping is important. Just like she’s just not relying on the anecdotal. We need some organized foundational research to have some statistic value to guide how we do it. But again, the research is expensive, research is complex and not everybody, it’s either interested or has the time to do it. I think that if you can document, if you successfully and strictly document the anecdotal cases, you have enough evidence to prove that what we do doesn’t work. And that’s what I’ve done over the years.

Nick Urban [00:35:31]:
Yeah. And so if you have A client that comes to you with a condition or something that they want to work on that isn’t well represented in the literature. How do you go about designing a protocol for them? Or does it come down to the same things we were discussing and then you just choose a particular brain power band to focus on?

Santiago Brand [00:35:50]:
I am so happy you’re asking that. Let me give you a couple of examples of that. First and foremost, I will be ethical and I will inform the client that the protocol we’re implementing is purely experiment. I will say I did not find enough research to support neurofeedback or biofeedback for your condition, if you’re willing. This is purely experiment, which means I don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re both going to work very hard to see if we can affect make a change. I had a case of an individual, a young man, with cerebral palsy and his atoptosis, his head popping was quite severe. The parents never came with the expectation that neurofeedback was going to make him normal. They knew that that’s not possible, but they wanted to see some change.

Santiago Brand [00:36:47]:
When we first reported the eeg, because of his atosis, the EEG was just full of muscle tension. There’s nothing we could do to get that out of that. What I did then is I started teaching him some heart rate variability and muscle relaxation. And he was. He had the ability to learn it. He learned it very quickly. When we recorded the new eeg, it was very clean. So right there and then you’re seeing a shift.

Santiago Brand [00:37:13]:
You know, it’s not the main objective. Are you seeing the shift? We worked very hard with this young man and he learned to play the piano, he’s learning to speak English and he’s going to go to college like a neurotypical person would. Is he neurotypical in the strict sense of the word? No. But now can he adapt to society more efficiently? Yes. And there is very little to no research on neurofeedback for cerebral palsy because it’s not funded, because it’s not something that’s too common, whatever the reason is. But this is a success story and the dad is a psychologist and he’s always promoting this and he’s always posting pictures of his son on social media, playing the piano, learning English. People are really impacted by this because it is not published. Should we discount it? I don’t think so.

Santiago Brand [00:38:05]:
Now, all the same, I had another case of a gentleman who was the Victim of a terrorist attack. There was a car bomb. The car bomb exploded, he fell three stories and hit the ground. There’s more research with tbi, but it was a very complicated case because he had to learn to do everything after the attack. He had to learn how to ride, how to use the toilet, everything. When he came to me, he was struggling with anger and aggression. And we worked very hard with this individual for about three years. It was a lot of hard work.

Santiago Brand [00:38:44]:
Every day doing sessions, ups and downs. But today he’s happily married. After that he went to Harvard and got an mba. Today he’s running the company, the family company. It was a whole transformation, right. And all it took was an open minded skeptic. The reason he came to me is because at the time I had written an article about neurofeedback on a local newspaper and he read it, he took the article to his neurosurgeon and the neurosurgeon was open minded enough to say, you know what, let’s try it. I don’t think it can hurt you anymore.

Santiago Brand [00:39:20]:
Then the neurosurgeon was so impressed by the results that now he started referring clients me. And many times these were purely experimental cases. Some got excellent results, some got some results, some got no results. That’s the other important thing. I’m not going to sit here and say neurofeedback works for everything or biofeedback works for everything, because it doesn’t. Unfortunately, there’s a percentage of the population we can do nothing for because they’re not ready for it, because their condition doesn’t allow it, because I got the wrong protocol. I have to admit that I’ve had failures just like everyone else. But the important takeaway here is let’s look at the research, let’s look at the anecdotal cases and let’s see what the, the, the, the mid, the middle ground is here and how we can use that to help people.

Santiago Brand [00:40:10]:
Wow.

Nick Urban [00:40:12]:
You’ve mentioned several anecdotes so far and also a little bit about the research. If you were to like list the things that you see in either of those two categories, I guess both of those two categories combined. What are the different things that neurofeedback may potentially work for?

Santiago Brand [00:40:28]:
But it works wonderful for your sleep, it does wonders on your sleep. Now does it help every sleep disorder? No. But here’s the takeaway. Everybody that I’ve done neurofeedback for throughout the years, I’ve seen, I don’t know, 5,6000 clients in my career. And every one of them, even if neurofeedback is not done for sleep as the primary target, every one of them tell me that the first thing that shifts is their sleep. Adhd, epilepsy, migraines, memory, trauma. All of them tell me I’m sleeping better is the first thing they tell me. When they tell me I’m sleeping better, they mean they’re falling asleep quicker, they’re staying asleep for longer, and they’re waking up refreshed.

Santiago Brand [00:41:15]:
Okay, now that we have wearables like the OURA ring, we can track that and objectively measure that, but the first thing that people tell me is my sleep is better. You have insomnia can work for you. If you have night terrors, it can work for you. I’ve seen transformations with sleep apnea, too, and some parasomnias. So let’s try. What’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work. You came in with nothing, you left with nothing. You didn’t lose anything.

Santiago Brand [00:41:46]:
But you can gain some or you can gain a lot. It’s wonderful for adhd, as the more widespread condition that we can train the brain for is adhd. It works well for anxiety, it works well for depression. Now it is FDA approved for ptsd. We’ve been using this for PTSD way before the FDA approved it. But now we have that endorsement, which is huge for us. And I’ve seen incredible transformations with ptsd. It can work for under management, it can work for ocd, obsessive compulsive disorder.

Santiago Brand [00:42:27]:
We are growing in the range of conditions that we can treat. Many of these are backed up by the research, many of these are not anecdotal. And it’s not only me, it’s my colleagues the world over who can tell you we have success stories. So I would say that stress, anxiety, depression, sleep, peak performance. If you’re a CEO, you’re a musician, you are a Navy seal, you’re a surgeon, you’re an athlete, you’re a fighter pilot. If you want to optimize your performance even further, you can do it. There’s athletes out there like Bryson DeChambeau, the golfer. He openly talks about having done brain mapping and neurofeedback for him.

Santiago Brand [00:43:10]:
The AC Milan in Italy, the Italian football team that won the World cup in 2006, they used neurofeedback as part of their training region. This is not a secret. Some athletes, of course, want to keep it a secret. But it’s open. If you go and talk to many peak performers, they Credit Neurofeedback for it. I forget the name of Def Leppard’s drummer. The guy who lost the army. He did Neurofeedback as part of his recovery and he openly talks about it.

Santiago Brand [00:43:42]:
So it’s nice to have the endorsement of all these top individuals. If it works for them, it works for the layperson, it works for the housewife, it works for the CEO, it works for the fighter pilot, it works for the monk who wants to become better at meditating.

Nick Urban [00:43:59]:
In that work, when people come to you and they’re like, yeah, but I could also just meditate and doesn’t require any fancy gear and I’ll get a lot of the same benefits, what’s your answer to that?

Santiago Brand [00:44:08]:
My answer to that is people lying. Their brain doesn’t. Okay, that’s a very strong point. So, okay, if you tell me you can meditate, let’s look at your EEG and let’s see if that’s the case. Your brain will tell me whether you’re telling me the truth or not. And if you can meditate and get all the benefits, more power to you. Do I think meditation is the only tool? No. Just like neurofeedback is not the only tool.

Santiago Brand [00:44:33]:
This requires good nutrition, supplementation, good sleep. The point is, and I’ll tell you this, I saw a case yesterday here, this individual comes to the brain mapping and they have all this signature for depression and ptsd. But all the time they kept telling me, no, I’m okay, no, no, no. So at some point I can think to myself, I’m not going to confront. I’m never confronted individual. But I keep thinking people lie. Their brain doesn’t. What is the reason why they are hiding behind this? They want to look tough.

Santiago Brand [00:45:17]:
I asked this individual, was any member of your family in the military? Was your father in the military? They said, how can you know that? I said, well, because you have patterns for peak performance. But I also see patterns that indicate to me depression and anxiety and depression and trauma. And I think you learned through behavioral observation to shut them down. And at that point they said, that’s interesting. You might be right. So they didn’t fall completely, but they were open to dd. And again, if somebody tells me I don’t need that, I will say, well, people lie. The brain doesn’t.

Santiago Brand [00:46:02]:
Well, when somebody tells me that doesn’t happen to me, all I have to do is look at the brain and I know if they’re telling me the truth or not. So if you feel that people tell me, I Don’t get stressed. I tell them, you’re habituated to your stress. You’re used to your stress, but you are stressed. I don’t need anything. I need a glass of wine. Okay, well, I mean, my work is not to confront. If you want help, I’ll help you.

Santiago Brand [00:46:31]:
If you feel that you’re doing that, that’s great. But I’ve had interviews throughout the years who tell me, no, you know what? I don’t believe in this. And remap is not showing anything. I don’t need any of that. I can do well on my own. 80% of these individuals, sooner or later they come back to me and I will tell them what happened. That’s the first question I asked them when they come back, what happened? And they go, what do you mean? I said, look, man, I wasn’t born yesterday, what happened? So they will say, yeah, with children, adhd, we’re not completely sure about the neurofeedback. Two weeks later they come back and I say, what did he do? Oh, yeah, he tried to burn down the school.

Santiago Brand [00:47:18]:
Now, of course, this is a very exaggerated example, but the kid did something that got him into trouble. So now they comfort the help. Many times when individuals are not ready, willing or able, something in their life will happen that wakes them up and makes them realize that they need the help. And this happens again. In my experience with about 80% of these individuals, I don’t need to sell you anything. This requires your commitment. You need to be flexible. You need to be open.

Santiago Brand [00:47:46]:
Without flexibility and openness, nothing works. Not even meditation.

Nick Urban [00:47:51]:
You’ve mentioned brain mapping a number of times today, and it sounds like it’s a very important part of your entire process. I’ve talked about neurofeedback and biofeedback on the show a number of times previously, but not much about brain mapping. What exactly is that? What are you seeing when you map someone’s brain?

Santiago Brand [00:48:05]:
When we map someone’s brain, we’re looking at several things. First, we put a cap on you, looks like a shower cap. And we look, it’s non invasive. Nothing is going to the brain. We use the cap to collect brainwave data. Your brainwave activity, we put that into an amplifier which makes the signal big enough for us to see. And we show that to you in front of you on the screen. The first thing we do is the eeg, the electroencephalogram.

Santiago Brand [00:48:29]:
I’m sure most of our listeners and viewers have seen an EEG or a medical show like House MD or any other drama or real where they have the cables on the head and let me see what the squiggly lines. Well, the squiggly lines will tell me a lot about you, even if I don’t know you. The first thing I do when I do a brain map after I do the recording and I do the interpretation is I will tell the client why they’re coming to see me by reading their brainwave activity. What I will tell the client is don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just relaying what your brain is telling me. I’m translating the language of brainwaves into English for you. So I will start saying, looks like you sleep, need some rescue, or it looks to me like you lose your temper here and there. So I will frame it in a, in day to day situations that resonate.

Nick Urban [00:49:22]:
With them, that highly generic things like looks like you sometimes have success or you sometimes get angry. You’ve had pain and trauma at some point during your life, you’ve had moments of glory at some point. These are like things that are more specific to the individual.

Santiago Brand [00:49:38]:
Yeah, well, it’s genetic. It’s not generic if it doesn’t show in the agent. So whatever shows in the brain map is what it feedback to them. And yeah, these things are genetic, of course, but it doesn’t happen to everybody. Okay, now let me give you a couple of good examples of why a brain map is good. The first thing I say is brain mapping should be as routine as getting an ekg, your prostate exam, your mammogram, it should be part of every doctor’s office and it should be an annual exam. It’s only a 20 minute to 30 minute exam. That gives you a lot of information.

Santiago Brand [00:50:16]:
It’s non invasive and sometimes insurance will cover that. It’s really, it’s not an mri, which can be more expensive, it’s really cost efficient. It should be part of schools. Imagine if every kid at school had a brain map. At the beginning of the years at baseline, this child starts failing. Let’s compare a new brain to the first one and see what’s happening. What has transitioned in that brain that’s causing the skid to fail. If we did that, we would have so many fewer problems in society.

Santiago Brand [00:50:50]:
Now when we look at this weekly lines, we’re looking for patterns, patterns that indicate anxiety, depression, stress. But we don’t label. It’s not a diagnostic tool per se, it’s an interpretation tool. So in my personal and professional style, I never label anyone. I will not tell to the client, you are adhd, you have Depression, you have anxiety. I will tell them I see this pattern affecting you in this area of your life. Let’s say that your kid did not make the bet that triggers you. How do I know I’m getting it right? The client smiles, they turn around and look at the child.

Santiago Brand [00:51:32]:
They have all these body language expressions that let me know that I’m hitting the mark. Or even if they close up and they go, no, that’s not me, I know I’m hitting the mark. It will show me why you’re struggling and why you’re suffering in silence. Your brain doesn’t lie. Now, the important thing here is we can find the part of the brain it’s coming from. Because even for conditions like depression or anxiety or stress, it hits people in different parts of the brain differently. This is the individualization of the process. I could record 20 people with depression and they all can have a unique brainwave pattern, but they all complain of depression or have been diagnosed with depression.

Santiago Brand [00:52:17]:
Okay, so that’s the important thing. It tells me why you’re struggling and it helps us find a roadmap to your healing. It helps guide medication for licensed medical professionals who understand the eeg. Let me give you a couple of good examples. I had a 16 year old girl come to me a couple of years ago and the reason they brought her is because the mom found a suicide note in her nightstand drawer. She was already planning. She had written the note, the mom found it, she was hospitalized. After she was released, she came to me for a pregnant.

Santiago Brand [00:52:56]:
This girl was diagnosed with ADHD because most people are diagnosed with ADHD today. She was diagnosed with depression. So she was on Ritalin and an antidepressant that I cannot bring up. Well, I’m recording the eeg and then on this part of the brain here in the left insula, which is a region that is very important for emotional regulation, I find epileptiform, not epileptiform activity, which means she had activity that looks like epilepsy. But she doesn’t have epilepsy. But I’m not a neurologist. I refer the case to a neurologist who confirmed that that was a non epileptiform content. Well, guess what? That’s what was causing the suicidal ideation.

Santiago Brand [00:53:40]:
Did she need Ritalin? No. Did she need an antidepressant? No. And this is per the neurologist, not me. She needed an anticonvulsant. So she’s put on the anticonvulsant and a couple of weeks later she’s no longer suicidal. But Every professional, so called professional she went to never looked at the brain. The cardiologist looks at the heart, the neurologist looks at the mri. Psychiatry and psychology don’t look at the brain.

Santiago Brand [00:54:11]:
Why are we not doing that? So we will look at this. Okay, Another case, a lady, 23 years old, comes with aggression, very angry. We do a brain map and she has temporal loaf epilepsy. She’s not seizing, but that’s causing the anger. Again, same thing. Ritalin, antidepressants, antipsychotic medication. All of those are taken out per the neurologist suggestion or the psychiatrist suggestion. She’s putting on anticonvulsant and the ender receipts.

Santiago Brand [00:54:41]:
Now we can do brain treating. Now I’m giving you extreme cases. Not everybody does have epileptiform content. But let me give you a real statistic. 40% of people with the diagnosis of ADHD will have non epileptiform content in their brain. 40%. This 6 out of 10 people for autism, the number goes up to 60%. 4 out of 10 for ADHD, 6 out of 10 for autism will have non epileptic content in their brain.

Santiago Brand [00:55:15]:
And that contributes to their symptomatology. Now, I’ve seen individuals with anger, I look at the brain and I go, have you had a brain injury? And they go, yeah, but that was like many years ago. I’ll say, well, it doesn’t matter. These are the residuals of that. That’s why you’re so angry, because. And they tell me, I had an MRI yesterday and it was normal. And I said, that’s good news. Structure, your brain is fine.

Santiago Brand [00:55:42]:
What the brain map shows is function. And many times an individual goes for an MRI and everything’s okay structurally, but they still feel, they still experience headaches, they still have depression, they still feel, experience hallucinations. Well, let’s do an EEGF brain map, quantitative electroencephalogram, which is your brain map. And let’s look at the function of the brain. That’s where we find the source of the problem. Now, we can find the right medication for you, we can now refer you to the right professionals and we can do a holistic approach for you. It helps you understand the why. The most important thing about the brain mapping is the why.

Santiago Brand [00:56:24]:
Why are you not sleeping well? Why are you struggling with anger, why you’re so depressed, why am I flunking out of sleep? Or what can I do to get better at. And the brain mapping gives you that because it’s in your head. It literally is in your head.

Nick Urban [00:56:40]:
Yeah, it Makes me think, do you know why the people that have non epileptic electrical abnormalities in the brain experience those? I’m guessing it differs from case to case, perhaps a previous head injury. But is there any one or several factors you see most commonly?

Santiago Brand [00:56:59]:
Yeah, well, there are several factors. It could be residuals from a surgery. I did a brain map on an individual who had a brain tumor on the right side of the brain. They took the tumor out, but then he got seizures after that. So it could be that sometimes they develop over time for no apparent reason. Sometimes is lifestyle related. It could be the most common cause in people who’ve never had a genetic predisposition to that is traumatic brain injury. Then things like stress will exacerbate.

Santiago Brand [00:57:32]:
The point is that they’re called non epileptic because they’re not intense enough to create an actual convulsion. But depending on where you find them, that’s your symptom talk. If it is in the temporal lobes, it’s not only correlated with hallucinations or aggression. Many times people are diagnosed with schizophrenia. I’ve had a couple of cases, they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and in reality was temporal lobe non epileptic discharges. Guess what, you take off the antipsychotic, you put them on anticonvulsants and the so called schizophrenia goes. It’s that differential interpretation which is really, really important at the same time for your sleep, the same for your anxiety, the same for anything.

Nick Urban [00:58:16]:
Is that something they have to be on for life at that point or does it correct naturally over time or are there ways of correcting the imbalance?

Santiago Brand [00:58:24]:
Normally with neurofeed, but we find that we can correct the imbalance for the rest of your life. I have had four cases that I’ve worked with with epilepsy and the last one I worked with seven years ago. So this, this case is. So the last time I saw them was six to seven years ago. And to this day I still talk to them. They’re all seizure free, medication free. But again, this is declared by a neurologist who’s done follow up EEGs. This is not me saying this, I’m just saying what the neurologist has said.

Santiago Brand [00:58:56]:
For most people, if you have a healthy lifestyle, your shifts are permanent. Now some people may want to come for tune ups, that’s fine. Some people may require some tune ups because the brain, it doesn’t completely hold the change. But I would say for 80, 85% of the population you come do the neurofeedback and you may never need it again?

Nick Urban [00:59:20]:
Yeah. For the people who have to go on antiepileptic, anticonvulsive medications. What about that situation?

Santiago Brand [00:59:28]:
Well, the goal is always to eliminate the medication, not only for epilepsy, but for any neuropsychiatric condition. When we train the brain with neurofeedback, our first goal is to always titrate medication and eliminate medication. In a large percentage of the population were able to do so. In some percentage, we’re at least able to drastically lower the dosage, which reduces the side effects and the AB reactions. Will it be successful for every individual? No, unfortunately, we cannot get into any. Every individual off medication, but in most cases we can and. And the individual go and functions just fine.

Nick Urban [01:00:11]:
Yeah, that’s. That’s what I thought from my own research into neurofeedback. Are you finding that any particular substances, nutrients, ingredients, are helping the brain adapt more quickly through neuroplasticity or synaptogenesis, the forming of new connections between brain cells? What is working to help people accelerate the results they’re getting either from this? I’m sure you could probably apply the same thing to other forms of brain training, even something as simple as meditation.

Santiago Brand [01:00:42]:
Absolutely, absolutely. But it has to be personalized and individualized. Here in Singapore, we have a clinic and we work with a holistic team. We have a nutritionist from the US her name is Jessica. And what Jessica does is the metabolic testing. Every client that comes through our clinic and gets a brain map always gets referred to Jessica for metabolic testing. What sort of metabolic test she does? It depends. It will depend on the client’s symptoms and condition.

Santiago Brand [01:01:14]:
But what I will say to Jessica is, look, I have this recent case. We had a girl who’s 14 and clear symptoms of ADHD, brain fog, very tired, even extreme for a teenager. Teenagers are tired normally, but this was an extreme case. And so I send them to Jessica. Jessica does the testing. She has hyperthyroidism. There’s always a correlation. Everybody should do brain mapping.

Santiago Brand [01:01:49]:
Everybody should do metabolic testing. We all have some degree of dysregulation. Some of us is very low and manageable and even ideal for the organism. And some people have a larger degree of dysregulation. So that’s based on the results of the testing plus what we see on the brain map. Then Jessica can prescribe the right supplements, the right nutrients, and reformulate their eating habits. Some people find they have food insensitivity, so food intolerances they didn’t know about, dairy, eggs, things like that. They stop eating that for A while, then they get better and they can go back to their regular eating habits.

Santiago Brand [01:02:32]:
The common things like lowering sugar and consumption and alcohol consumption. But the point is here that yes, there is a correlationship between your metabolics and how that impacts your brain. So the top down approach is always the red light therapy, the neurofeedback and biofeedback and the bottom up approach is how you eat, what you eat, how you sleep, whether you exercise or not and whatever supplements you need to take. I did the metabolic and the DNA testing recently with Jessica and she found out that my microbiome was a little dysregulated. So amount of supplements currently to fix that. And then I always put on the helmet to do the red light therapy every day. I mean it wouldn’t serve my, it wouldn’t serve society if I don’t take care of myself.

Nick Urban [01:03:20]:
Right, yeah. And so that the rationale is that your gut is a bidirectional information highway to your brain and by addressing that you’re going to help quell neuroinflammation and you’re going to support your brain’s overall health and thus performance.

Santiago Brand [01:03:36]:
Correct. And you need to work on both. Sometimes you can start doing all the neurofeedback, all the red light therapy, but if your gut is not stable, it’s not going to work. And the other way around, you can do all the supplementation you can. And that’s what most people do. I find that society in general, people in general take care of their, most of them take care of the partner. So they go to the gym, they would do cold plunges and all these things, but when it comes to the brain, they don’t do anything. And, and the people who do the brain normally, they don’t do the, they don’t go to the gym, they don’t, you know, they don’t exercise regularly.

Santiago Brand [01:04:14]:
You need both and it’s about balance. If you don’t. The, the, the problem with this is we have so many so called gurus, you know, that tell you that you have to live like a monk, you don’t have to live like a monk, you don’t have to do cold plunges. Cold plunges are enough for everybody. I’ve never done one. I’m curious about what they do when I’ve never done one. Would I ever need one? Maybe yes, maybe no. But the fact that I’m not doing cold plunges and calisthenics and showing my six pack online doesn’t mean that I don’t or even if I don’t have a six pack.

Santiago Brand [01:04:45]:
Doesn’t mean that my life is not completely. Again, it’s about working for what works for you. You don’t have to look like a movie star and you don’t have to think like Michael Jordan just to be successful in life. You have to be you. You have to do you. That’s the whole point.

Nick Urban [01:05:01]:
Beautiful, Santiago. We will start to wind this one down. If people are curious what else they can do for their brain health, perhaps they’re. They fall into the camp of the people who are already taking the supplements. They’re supporting their health, they’re doing some of the basic things that you’ve mentioned. They’re seeing the light, they’re sleeping, they’re eating well, reducing stress. Any other brain fitness, Brain health, brain training practices that you personally like?

Santiago Brand [01:05:28]:
Well, heart rate variability, Biofeedback is very important. So I would suggest finding a practitioner in your neck of the woods that can be certified. To me, the most important thing is that these individuals are BCIA certified because they are individuals who have board certification and they are the real deal because they know the equipment. They’re not BSing you to find a licensed board certified practitioner in the cockpit woods that can teach you some repairability. Biofeedback, there are some other interventions like emdr, eye rapid moving desensitization, brain spotting, which I’m trained in and I’ve used in the past I find fascinating and also very helpful for some individuals. I think that the most important thing is that you find somebody who knows what they’re talking about. Somebody who’s actually gone to school and been through the trenches and are ethical and responsible in providing you getting your healing on the path to better health and well being.

Nick Urban [01:06:35]:
Well, thanks for that. And if you guys tuning in have come across any tools that we did not talk about that are related to brain health performance, we would love to hear those from you. So go ahead and drop those in the comment of this episode. Santiago, if people want to connect with you and to follow your work or to work with you, how do they go about that?

Santiago Brand [01:06:55]:
The most common way to contact me is through my website, Santiago Brand.com. i also have a YouTube channel, Santiago Brand and my Instagram is Neuro Santiago. You can reach out to me, you can message me through my YouTube channel or my Instagram or my website which connects directly to my email. So again it’s santiagobrand.com neuro Santiago for Instagram and Santiago brand for YouTube.

Nick Urban [01:07:23]:
Awesome. And I’ll put a copy of all those links in the show Notes for this episode. Santiago, if you had one final thought for people who made it this far, what would that be?

Santiago Brand [01:07:34]:
My recommendation is always be yourself and get help. So my favorite thing to say to people is, do not care for what people think of you as long as you’re not doing anything immoral or illegal. And that shouldn’t matter. You be yourself, do yourself, follow your dreams, get help. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks as long as you’re not doing anything more immoral or illegal.

Nick Urban [01:07:59]:
Well, thank you so much for joining me on High Performance Longevity today.

Santiago Brand [01:08:04]:
Thanks, Dick, for the invitation. I had a great time.

Nick Urban [01:08:06]:
Me too. All right, bye everybody. Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes, and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.