Hacking the Head & the Heart with Leah Lagos, PhD.

Can we hack our bodies and our minds? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice talk about how to optimize human performance with performance and sport psychologist Leah Lagos, Phd.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And I got with me, as usual, my co-host, first Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a professional stand-up comedian. Just great. I think everyone should have their own personal comedian. That's just...

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I do too. However, unlike you, I believe everybody should pay their own personal comedian. You, my friend, you give yourself away to the world. You're like, "I am your personal astrophysicist. Ask me anything."

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're gonna, you say, "I'm your comedian, pay me."

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  I'm like this, "I am your personal comedian. Now all you need is two drinks and a minimum and a cover and we're good."

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good. That's your currency. Yes. And of course, I got Gary O'Reilly, who gives authenticity to this program. Gary, former soccer pro, sports commentator, I'd be just delighted and honored to have you on StarTalk as my co-host. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here again, Neil. Excellent. And you're not new. You've been with us for a while, but I feel fresh every time that you come on, because when you say things, it comes from places that I've never seen or heard of, and that's always good for me, because that means I learn. Well, as do I. Okay. So, we, this topic is mind and body, all right? And in a sports context, you know, we've known that the mind controls the body. We've known this, all right? But

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we can ask the question differently. If the mind can control the body, okay, can you hack into your mind? And control your body in ways you could not have previously accomplished. What do you think of that? And we have today, someone who has made a career of advising people on how to do this. And I have Dr. Leah Lagos, did I say that right? Leah, welcome to StarTalk.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Hi Neil, pleasure to be here.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, excellent, great, great to have you here. Your expertise, let me get your title straight here. You're a doctor of clinical psychology at Rutgers University. And you are licensed clinical psychologist specializing, this is the fun part, specializing in performance psychology. Oh my gosh, so most people, they think I need a psychologist because like you have an issues and problems. You're saying, these people don't have problems, they want to become superhuman in their mental capacity. That's badass right there. I didn't know you can get a degree in that.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Well, it started Neil, as a sports psychologist. And then the rest of the performance world came and wanted to do what all the athletes were doing. And so it rendered itself to a larger type of elite competitor outside of just sports. But it's a lot of fun. And we certainly focus on treating the mind and the body simultaneously for the most expedient and effective trainings and treatments.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I've got you, you conducted risk assessments for NFL teams? To, what did you do there? What did that involve?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  So that particularly involved for many years going to the NFL Combine and working with a cohort of three to five other psychologists that the team also identified, selected and brought in to do things like identify risk, do character profiles. And essentially, the head coaches wanted to know, who am I bringing on my team?

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. So it's a psychological profile of?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And Neil, they would ask us specific questions to answer. So some years, they wanted us to find out, there was a year of my main job for One of the teams was to identify the risks that each member brought on.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but what I thought it was, was, maybe it still is, is are they risk takers so that they might put their, their health or and their physiology at risk doing something that you might say is stupid if it fails or brilliant if it succeeds?

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that makes sense. That's remember when, remember when Roethlisberger had a motorcycle accident and the whole city of Pittsburgh was POed. They're like, who let that guy on a motorcycle? Why would they allow him to be on a motorcycle?

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and you find out is that the very psychological state that has him do that is what made him great in other things. Is that a fair way to think about this, Leah?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  It's absolutely fair that sometimes someone's gift can also be their danger. And you have to be aware of, of what those may be.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me just get your full resume out here. So, um, you wrote a book, Heart, Breath, Mind, subtitled, Train Your Heart to Conquer Stress and Achieve Success. So you're, you're trying to give a person complete control of their mind, body and soul? That's, that's audacious. But and, and the fact is that that's even possible, right? I mean, so you, you figured this out?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Well, I, I want to explain to you because it's just such a dynamic world. And Neil, I've been doing this for over 15 years. Not only do I love it, but my clients have made it my specialty. So, so first, I worked primarily with golfers and tennis players. They sent me all their friends and family. Lo and behold, I'm traveling on the PGA Tour. Now I'm working with teams. Then the business world came in. They knew the golfers. They knew the tennis players and, and they heard about being able to control your stress response to control how you make decisions.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Wall Street's, Wall Street traders on the spot, decision making business. Oh my gosh. So everybody needs you. And everybody who's anybody needs you.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow, you are the eat, pray, love of performance.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so what are the, what are you, and then I'll, and I'll pass off to my co-host here, because I don't want to hog the mic, but what are, what's your origin story at bringing sort of the, the physiology to the psychology? Where did that come from?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  So, I attended graduate school just the other day, 15 years ago, at Rutgers University, and Paul Lear-

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got enough degrees on your damn wall there. You, you gotta, you better be an expert at something by the time we're done here.

• 6:48Chuck Nice?

  I love it. On her wall, she has degrees. I have sunflowers.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Both make people happy.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good. Okay, so go on.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  And, and Afghani, Meschel, and Paul Lear are really at the core of heart rate variability biofeedback, identifying that a specific rate of breathing produces a rhythm throughout the body known as resonance frequency. And what this does, it stimulates large blood pressure oscillations that give you control over your reactivity, your ability to recover, and get this, your brain and what it's doing. Okay? And so I went up to them during a presentation. For years, they had used heart rate variability biofeedback to treat autonomic disorders, anxiety, depression, blood pressure issues. The Meschelos, interestingly enough, came

• 7:40Speaker 02

  from Russia. They treated cosmonauts. And I asked them, Neil, can we use this, I'm a sports psychologist, can we use this with athletes to enhance performance? Little did I know, that would lead to the next 15 years of my research and practice.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, you know, the, the true side of genius is seeing what everyone else sees, but thinking what no one else has thought. And so you took this, this very active field and gave it a whole other life. And so just congratulations to what you've done and what you've forged in, in these efforts. So-

• 8:18Chuck Nice?

  And, and the other thing is, you clearly must be producing positive results, because you still have a job with sports teams. And they give zero Fs about anything but a bottom line and results. Everything else is absolute shite, as they say, because all they care about is- Performance results.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, did we win or did we lose? It's pretty, it's pretty simple. So Gary, you had a question. What was it?

• 8:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, it's just going back to the risk assessment. Uh, just to put it in a nutshell for everybody watching and listening. The teams need to know whether the pin they're about to roll into the locker room, or the grenade, rather, about to roll in the locker room, has a pin in it, or whether it's about to explode. Because they don't care if you blow yourself up. It's whether you blow everything else they've spent years building up. And that's the big deal. It's not just, you know, are they going to cost us money? Are they going to bring the empire down? And I've seen a couple of guys who actually have done that. Because nobody did risk assessment.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  So, here's a question for the two of you. How does one person come into a group dynamic and ruin the group dynamic with such toxicity that the team starts to lose?

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Leah, is there, are you figuring also the, the interplay of, of, of psychological states? In, in, if it's a team sport as opposed to just a golfer?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. But what's really fascinating, and it answers your question and Chuck's, is that the inability to regulate your physiology means that you are impulsive. You can't control what's happening in your body and often what's happening external to your body. And I would say those are the people that have some of the highest risks, not only of choking under pressure and not being able to perform consistently at their optimal level of ability, but those are also the disruptors, the people that get in trouble off the field, the people that can't get along and engage prosocially. And interestingly enough, high HRV is also correlated to prosocial behaviors. So now-

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But HRV, heart rate, heart rate variability, HRV?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yes, heart rate variability is correlated to prosocial behaviors. So you begin to not only answer your question, Neil, but also Chuck's, and consider the physiological basis for not only health disruptions, but performance disruptions. The inability to connect with other people, being disruptive, engaging in behaviors that can bring risk to a team, choking under pressure. These all have physiological bases.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we've seen some very famous players, high paid, choke when they shouldn't have. And the opposite, very players that you rely on in exactly those times. So you're saying you can fix the choking?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  I I can certainly make a significant impact. I had a golfer on the tour and I had permission to to talk about this particular piece because he found it so meaningful to him. But we would get to the 18th hole and he would look up at the sign and start counting how many putts he had to make or not make to get to a certain number on the leaderboard. Guess what that did to his physiology? His heart rate would jump up and I could see it. But it wasn't until I showed him on a heart rate measure what was happening with his heart rate, how it correlated with dismantling his performance.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He psyched himself out?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Not just psyched himself out. He he basically changed the inner state of his body. So it's not just the mind, but it's his whole body.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so tell me, how does resonant frequency graft into this discussion? And this is when you spoke of it in breathing and heart rate, when I as a physicist, when I think of frequency, I just think of how many times per second something happens or per minute. Is it are you thinking of it in those terms or is there some other frequency we should be thinking of?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  No, that's exactly the term. So everybody has the objective of heart rate variability biofeedback is to identify someone's resonant frequency, the rate of breathing that produces these optimal heart rate oscillations throughout the body. Generally, it's between 4.5 and 6.5 breaths per minute. Neil, your resonance frequency may be different than mine, but that's something we would discover either using a handheld device or going in to see a clinician. But everyone, even if you don't have access to a mobile device or a clinician, can breathe at approximately six breaths per minute and derive a fair amount of benefits from from breathing at that rate because it's close to most people's resonant frequency. But what

• 12:57Speaker 02

  happens is pretty incredible because it realigns the nervous system, the sympathetic, the fight or flight, and the parasympathetic, the breaking action where you want to be when you're making decisions, you're wanting to perform at your peak. And what happens is the systematic activation through resonant frequency breathing of resonant

• 13:17Speaker 02

  In the body does really incredible things. We're seeing that it actually changes the amount of connected tissue between the prefrontal lobe, things that inhibit impulses, organize emotions, and the brain stem. We're seeing that this delivers more blood flow to the brain, so the diameter of the blood vessels is larger during stressful situations. Really dynamic physiological changes that are happening as people breathe at resonant frequency.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is crazy. You know, Leah, I think, do you have like some robot in your basement that you're programming this? You sound a little scary there. We can dilate your brain stem. It's like, what experiments are going on in your basement?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Leah, it blows my mind. I feel like we really, as performers, only tapped into what this does. And, and I know that your parents, your father was a sociologist and a human resource commissioner for the New York City mayor, your mother was a gerontologist for US Health Education. These people tend to have really beautiful hearts, that they actually, their gift in giving to the world comes physiologically from feeling the world more deeply. We actually see with those type of people greater heart rate reactivity. Those people in particular are the people that this, from a health perspective, can be really incredible for because they feel the world more deeply.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to, I have to agree. As a scientist, when I'm, when I'm not starting out my life feeling anything, really, I'm just thinking things. My parents were definitely, if I were to characterize how they behaved, how they thought, how they emoted, and how they interacted with me and my siblings, they, in there was a feeling for the world and the condition and the plight of others. I mean, it was a very, that's exactly what they were. Yeah, Gary, you were gonna say something, Gary?

• 15:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, okay, so we know that we can do these things. That's great. But what is the methodology?

• 15:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Am I just gonna sit in a dark room until I get it right? Or do I need to do a whole lot more than just-

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's gonna chase after you on the golf course. Stop looking at the leaderboard, stop.

• 15:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Given my age and these, that won't take it so long.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so how does this work? What are the mechanics of this, Leah?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  So, the scientific process of this is 10 weeks, breathing at 20 minutes twice a day at your resonant frequency. Again, if you don't know your resonant frequency, you can just start at six breaths per minute. A four-second inhale through the nose gently, and a six-second exhale through the mouth as if you're blowing on warm soup. People want to accentuate the inhale, wrong. The exhale is what really stimulates the vagus nerve. We want to have that little itty-bitty bit of pressure, like you have a soup spoon in front of you, and you're blowing on it.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just remind us, the vagus nerve does what? Just remind me.

• 16:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Makes you spend money, Neil, at the slot machine.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  The vagus nerve is responsible for all of your poorest decisions in life.

• 16:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 16:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, we got that out of the way.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've heard of it, I just don't remember what it is. The vagus nerve does what?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  The vagus nerve travels from the midbrain, innervated through the heart, all the way to the digestive tract. It's a super-information highway that carries information throughout our systems. When we produce a specific frequency, resonant frequency, it generates what's called .1 Hz from the heart. And guess what? Thank you, vagus nerve, super-information highway, it sends those signals to the brain and the digestive tract. So, when we've done MRIs, this was conducted by my colleagues and friends at Rutgers, they looked at MRIs of individuals who had engaged in a few minutes, I think it was five minutes, of resonant frequency breathing. The .1 Hz that they produced in the heart from the resonance breath was emitted. They could find .1 Hz

• 17:19Speaker 02

  all over different spheres of the brain. I would argue that's-

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just gotta jump in here, so-

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Audience, Leah using the word hertz doesn't mean anything caused pain. This is Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist from 150 years ago, who basically pioneered electromagnetic, our understanding of electromagnetic energy. And the unit of frequency is in his name, in his honor. All right, so cycles per second, one cycle per second is one hertz. So you cited one tenth of a hertz. So one tenth of something happening per second means it's one thing happening every 10 seconds, and that's six breaths a minute. So there you go. Just want to just make sure we're all on the same arithmetic page there.

• 18:10Gary O'Reilly?

  So doctor, I don't have 20 minutes during a game, which was like, excuse me, I'm gonna go and breathe. And come back and be, and be in this wonderful state. So is it a pre and post-performance exercise? Or can I teach myself to, once there's a little break in a game, and it can happen in NFL or basketball or baseball, can I just dial it up, ring it on, dial it down and move on? Or do I have to go through 20 minutes of breathing here?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No. So that's my specialized protocol. And I've been working with athletes and people in the hedge fund world for several years, doing this now, getting them to one breath. In one breath, they can access that flow state, and we've practiced this. So the 20 minutes twice a day increases the baseline. Let me tell you what it does. You do 10 weeks, 20 minutes twice a day, nothing else. You're able to reduce anxiety, improve your mood, enhance your focus, increase cognitive dexterity, the ability to think thoughts quickly and let them go. But then, in the moment, to actually control your stress response and be really precise from flipping from a stress state to a flow state, it's something we can practice and we can train. That takes some clinical work, and we do that in my office.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  But Gary, I've gotten traders and also golfers and basketball players and quarterbacks down to one breath, where they've trained to be able to activate that parasympathetic dominant state in just one breath. And it's really powerful, because when you can activate the parasympathetic state, you increase your objective decision-making, you also, as an athlete, increase fine motor skill. You're a golfer, you're a tennis player. This all impacts your ability for precise muscle movement.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, guys, we gotta take a short, we gotta take a short break. But when we come back, we're gonna have more from Dr. Leah Lagos and this heart rate variability biofeedback system that she's talking to us about. But in particular, we're gonna see how this applies not just to athletes when StarTalk returns.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about mind, body, what's in control of what and how and why. And we've got Dr. Leah Lagos with us from Rutgers University. And this is her specialty. Leah, welcome to StarTalk to talk about this stuff. This is fascinating. And we're just, the idea that psychology and physiology are blended together almost indistinguishably in your work, I think is just extraordinary. And something else we learned about, looking at your background, you've spent many years working on patients who have post concussion syndrome. So first, what is that?

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how do you rehabilitate them using your methods?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  So Neil, the majority of athletes with sports-related concussions recover within seven to 10 days and non-athletes within about three months. But there is a cohort of athletes and non-athletes that simply don't recover. They don't follow the trajectory for natural healing. And as a result, what happens is they can have a year where they're looking at the ceiling, they're not able to read, they're not able to participate, not only in sports, but in school. So at the University of Miami, I was working with their athletic department and specifically their sports medicine department called me and said, can your biofeedback thing help these athletes from concussion?

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can your magic work on us?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Because we don't know what to do. We've tried medicine.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can your sorcery kind of get it to?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  So what I said to them, Neil, was at the time, there wasn't a lot of research that this would help in a meaningful way. So I didn't over a promise. I said, all I can say is this is a process that absolutely will reduce anxiety, improve mood, and enhance focus. They go, we're sending them to you. And low and behold, my first athlete, her name is Samantha Sanderson. I have full permission to talk about her. She actually has her PhD now in sports psychology, clinical psychology, and guess what? Does biofeedback, because she said it changed her life. She came to me having experienced several concussions, and this time she wasn't healing. She couldn't read. She couldn't participate in sport. In fact, her sport-

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What sport did she get the concussion in?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Soccer.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soccer, wow.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Gary, you didn't tell us about this, Gary.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Gary.

• 22:57Gary O'Reilly?

  I didn't do it.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're sitting on your ass right there, and we're talking about concussions.

• 23:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I know.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, okay.

• 23:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, it's not, it's not the ball. Sometimes it's a, an elbow.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or your head against someone else's head.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 23:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to, to have things happen.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And so you have the physical injury itself, and then you have the other psychological pieces, like being fragmented or isolated from the team. You've been playing with this team for three years, and now you're in your room with no contact, because you, you can't be part of sport. So, anyway, we went through biofeedback. Around week seven, she came to me with tears pouring down her cheeks. I said, Sam, what's wrong? She goes, no, doc, these are happy tears. She goes, I read my first book in six months, Harry Potter, cover to cover. She said, I just kept reading. I was so excited. And she said, doc, it's the biofeedback. And I said, well, let's not get excited. Let's just keep going through this. And her, her trajectory was that her symptoms, her natural healing process that

• 23:58Speaker 02

  had been stilted for all this time, began. And what's fascinating, and so I've used this with over a hundred athletes with post concussion syndrome over the years, is there is a whole cohort of research that now supports why this is such an important piece.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  For physiological recovery, that concussion is not just an injury to the brain. It's an injury to the entire autonomic nervous system. You get hit in the head and the entire autonomic nervous system goes like this with sympathetic dominance very, very high and parasympathetic underactivation. The parasympathetic nervous system is injured. And until those rebalance, you are in a stilted place where you can't, the healing process can't actually begin. So I, I've used this with just many, many athletes and I will tell you, it's been life changing for so many that couldn't heal otherwise.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leah, I've seen Gary stare up in the ceiling and he doesn't read anything. Cause can you make him your next patient, please?

• 25:01Gary O'Reilly?

  There, there is some, there are some things the doctor can work with and be successful. And then there's me.

• 25:08Gary O'Reilly?

  So, no, so to say, okay, so what sort of timeline? I mean, you've answered the question about what's blocking the recovery. Because of, I mean, people must have come to you in the beginning and like, we don't know what to do. Yours now. And so, and then you work out what the, the blockages are and how you move the pieces aside and reconnect. But how long? I mean, we've talked about 10 weeks with being able to develop your methodology and techniques, but with a case like this, how long does this?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Well, we see meaningful improvements in 10 weeks. So by, in, in 10 weeks, we will see improvements in cognitive functioning. I'm not saying a cure. I'm saying improvements in the ability to focus. A lot of times people to read, I will say, pro-social behaviors return. People that have concussion often feel they can't socialize and connect as a human being anymore and it's devastating to them.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But how much do you expect? How much recovery do you expect in 10 weeks, even if you never showed up? And, and what if you were always an a-hole, but even before?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Lots of questions, but I,

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why, I don't know why I can't connect. I can't seem to connect to people, no matter what I do. Maybe you should try not being an A-hole so much, and people wouldn't mind talking to you at the cocktail party.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  So we'll bring it back to science, and, and I'll, I'll say that, you know, I have had many athletes with concussion go through several iterations of 10 weeks. They've been with me for sometimes a year or a year and a half to complete their recovery. But, but it's meaningful and it's often individual specific. So I think it's really important to, to, to say, you can make significant gains in 10 weeks, but often with concussion, it extends beyond that. So, eh, post concussion syndrome in particular, and, and that you may have to do several iterations.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the PCS that lingers.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  So now, what about, what about those who haven't had a concussion, but want to achieve those same results? What is, how do you establish a baseline for those people? Because a concussion is an easy baseline. It's like, this is what I was before, now this is what I am now. How do you go from, if I'm just Joe Athlete, who wants to do all of those things, but just up it to a level? How do you, as the clinician, establish the baseline?

• 27:35Speaker 02

  So I look at their heart rate variability. And what's really interesting, Chuck, is I think everyone should know their baseline heart rate variability and monitor it. It's certainly used for runners and endurance sport to assess overtraining. HRV will dip about two standard deviations, sometimes less, one standard deviation when people have overtrained. So coaches will monitor it to adjust practice. But if we have that baseline, then when someone's concussed, we can also look at their HRV to have some physiological prediction for recovery and, and understanding of what has been injured during the concussion itself. If this is brain damage to the body.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole new universe of data.

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole new universe of data, my gosh.

• 28:20Gary O'Reilly?

  So how did? Is there a point, sorry Neil, is there a point, doctor, where if someone's had a concussion, a serious concussion, like anyone's, none of them aren't serious, I understand that. If, is it a year, two years, three years? Is there a point where you say, this has been in place too long, I cannot? Undo what has been done here.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  We haven't said that yet, and that's a hundred plus athletes. So I will sometimes graduate the client into neurofeedback, particularly if they're having focus issues and neurofeedback. So heart rate variability biofeedback is going to realign the autonomic nervous system, engender greater blood flow and oxygen to the brain. But neurofeedback will help them emit specific brain frequencies that allow for cognitive focus, for greater flexibility. And so sometimes we'll do that if they're still having attention issues. Sometimes HRV biofeedback for concussed patients doesn't mend the focus piece as tightly as they want. And so then we'll add the neurofeedback.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  But it's been incredible. Clients that essentially were staring at the room of their bedroom for nine months with no treatment that was working, we worked with for six months to a year using just biofeedback and had incredible gains and then using neurofeedback for just a few months. And they're off to college and just doing brilliantly and sending us letters. It's really, truly incredible.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Leah, what about Wall Street traders? These are high, these are high-strung people. They have to make split decisions that could cost millions. And what is the challenge that one needs to overcome here? They're just high-strung people. So where do you come in?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  I would exchange high-strung to high brain activity. That's the brain activity all at once. And, and the ability to think of lots of things at different levels. And that's what they're great at and that cognitive processing speed. But a lot of them can't turn it off. And that's a problem for sleep. That's a problem for focus. It's a problem for decision making. Also, just people who are making rapid decisions and needing to perform at their peak, meaning integrating contextually lots of different information at once to make decisions. People in, in the trading world are really gifted at it. But you start to add stressors like losing money.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  And it changes how the brain works. That brain that can take so much contextual information becomes myopic or fragmented because they're under stress.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and the difference there with an athlete, if they train, they get to become a better athlete. Whereas in when they train, but with Wall Street traders, there's still this betting aspect, this sort of Las Vegas, what are the odds that you'll win aspect to it? And they will all eventually lose, sometimes if not most times. Right? So that's not even something that, even if you're really good, that you can't guarantee against it. So that's a given with every one of them.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  That's right. And what's so interesting, Neil, and I've seen it with golfers and I've seen it with traders, is after the win, that's some of the most dangerous time for the next play. Whether you're, you've just, you've just made a birdie or a hole in one on the golf course. There's all these neurochemicals lavishing your body and it actually changes how you think and how you perform. And the same thing happens with traders on Wall Street. They make this great trade, they make hundreds of millions of dollars and guess what? It changes how their brain operates for the next trade. So they have to also engage in the ability to have precise control, training to have precise control over their physiology to, to remove that danger. But what you're saying is objective, consistent

• 32:16Speaker 02

  decision making and, and how do you do that? And this goes back to what Gary was talking about in just a few breaths. You have to take 20 minutes? No, during the actual trading day. We get you to a place where you can take a breath and you can put yourself in what's called low frequency heart rate and activate the parasympathetic nervous system in just one breath to be able to engage more fully that cognitive dexterity and processing.

• 32:43Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, yes, this sounds great because we've got people in charge of our money that we need to be focused. But what's different from a single mother with two kids who's working two, three jobs and is stressed? And when you talk about a lot of brain activity, they've got to keep those kids entertained, they've got to keep them fed.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And keep them alive, yes.

• 33:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. You know, so there's a motivation. The, you know what, my Wall Street trader can go home to their fifty million dollar penthouse. This single mother's got to find the rent.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 33:16Gary O'Reilly?

  At the end of the month. So there's a, the brain activity is intense. So what difference is there?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Mothers managing lots of different tasks at home and, and needing to control their reactivity when there's three kids crying. And needing to stay calm under pressure, very, very much kind of the same type of need as someone on Wall Street or, or someone needing to make a putt, being in control, having precise control over how your body responds to stress. And it just has so many different applications.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what it, what it's, what, what you're saying, not to put words in your mouth, is that since more than athletes endure stress in our lives, this system of understanding and manipulation of our own mind and body has no end of applications in this world.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Exactly right. And there is even a new application about bias and discrimination. The, the newest application of HRV is looking at how HRV, heart rate variability, serves as a buffer to the effects of discrimination and engenders empathy, so people can control their inner biases when, when reacting and interacting with the world.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Now, are we, are we talking about the recipient of racism or the progenitor of racism? Because those are two different things.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two different sides of that fence right there.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's both, is what I'm saying simultaneously. The person who has received a racist comment, if they've gone through the HRV training, the effects of discrimination have actual physiological impacts on the body. Higher blood pressure, greater heart rate, more, um, so forth, cardiovascular disease, hypertension.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Believe me, I know. That is, because what happens is, somebody will say something racist and you're like, "Ooh, okay."

• 35:06Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  It's all I could do to keep from killing this person right now.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  And and the other, the other end, which is fascinating to think about in in the world we live in today, is that people have more control over their inner bias because they have more control over their inhibitory mechanisms in the prefrontal lobe of the brain through HRV biofeedback. So what I'm suggesting and research is, mounting research is showing is that HRV biofeedback helps people of all walks of life have greater control over their inner bias and also increases their empathy towards the other person. So it works both ways.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I have a practical question before we take our, our, our last break, is if I'm a sprinter and I'm on the starting blocks and I'm anticipating the, the starting gun, they don't use guns anymore, the starting sound, the, the starting tone, um, don't I want my heartbeat to be ready for that? Don't I want, I mean, what, what's so bad about a high heart rate? I mean, I guess I'm trying to understand what, how that information is folded back to what is called, what you'd call therapy in that situation?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Sure. So the one piece of this that I think is really important, and I love the question you asked Neil, is, is this just a calming exercise? And it's not. It gives you more control over how you react. If you need to amp up, you can amp up faster. If you need to let go, you can let go faster. So it gives you precision in both directions.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it gives you control knobs on your body?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. You just dial it up.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dial it up or down.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  That's right. Neil, I had an NFL coach a year ago come in and, and he came in for a specific reason and, but he said to me, Doc, I can't make you, you can't make me like I just came out of yoga class. I need to be able to still yell and, and, but have a little more control. I had to promise him up and down. He wasn't going to lose that edge. He was going to enhance both directions. And by week seven, he came in, he goes, oh my God, you're right. I'm so glad I trusted you. But it was so hard for him to trust that we weren't just going to calm him.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is funny. If the NFL became one big yoga class, that would be funny.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  But imagine.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  So listen here. Look, Damian, I know you've had four fumbles in just the last four possessions. I'm breathing now, and so it's okay.

• 37:44Chuck Nice?

  Just want to let you know, buddy, everything's okay.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  But what I want people to understand is, is that it, it means a quarterback can amp up and, and make decisions and, and get into that performance state faster and then let go for recovery. And what's so fascinating is by week seven of this process, most of my athletes have greater endurance. Do you know why that is? There's a cardiovascular energy savings because the gas exchange has been optimized, meaning there's less CO2 in your body, more O2.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, more efficient.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  That's right. And so my Olympians, my PGA Tour players, my elite level collegiate runner, come in and they say, what is going on, Dot? I can run faster. I can play my sport longer and I'm, I'm not changing my training. It's the HRV.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so let's move over to the psych- the psychology of this, okay? Based on what you just said and what Neil just said, as a comedian, I kind of get off on the hype before the show. All right, now, based on what you just said, all that expulsion of energy and everything, I feel exhausted in such a good way when it's over. But I'm gonna say that it's become a bit addictive. It's like the high, I want to do the next show because I want that high again. I also want to experience the come down off the high, the return to normal.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  So for somebody like a comedian or a performer, all right, what would that do to me? Because I, it sounds to me like.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, isn't Leah just telling you that now it won't happen spontaneously? You'll control it.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll say, I'm ready to go on. Let me, it's time to get hyped up. I'm just coming off the stage. Now let me come down.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just in control of it now.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  The spontaneity, though, is what creates the addictive quality to the experience.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to be addicted to anything.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  No, I want to be addicted to it.

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna take a break. When we come back, more with Dr. Leah Lagos. And we're gonna discuss whether or not COVID put the whole world in a stressful state and see if she can fix that when StarTalk returns.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the mind and the body, the two-way street that they can be as enabled by the expertise and studies of Dr. Leah Lagos. And again, welcome to StarTalk. And I got Chuck Nice here tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Gary, you're tweeting at My3LeftFeet. Is that what it was? Correct. That'll be me. I got that right. Wow. And Leah, you have a social media presence?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  I do. Dr. Leah, L-E-A-H, Lagos, L-A-G-O-S, on Twitter.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, excellent. Excellent. Very, very good. So in this segment, we just want to sort of digest a lot of what has come before. And so more colloquially, we're just saying we're shooting the shit. When we left off, Chuck, you dropped a question like a bomb and we didn't have time. So bring it back in.

• 41:17Chuck Nice?

  All right. So based on what you guys were talking about in terms of being able to control the experience, does that lessen the high that you've, that the performer feels from the experience itself? The fact that you are creating it, for instance, when I go on stage, that high, it's spontaneous. And so I'm seeking it each time.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm gonna echo Chuck's point. When I give a public talk... And if there's high anticipation, it's in a theater and there is this sort of anticipation that I'm not controlling, but it sort of puts me in a place that I want to be and need to be to deliver for that entire lecture. And then at the end, when it's over, there's this fascinating descent that is actually quite pleasurable, except completely exhausting, just because all the energy was focused in that time. I think I'm saying the same thing Chuck is saying. So are you doing a good thing by removing what happens automatically and spontaneously within us?

• 42:21Speaker 02

  So I'm not removing it, I'm amplifying. And so in those situations where you're having a state that's desired, this will allow you to amplify that state, even if it's happening holistically on its own. And the energy management piece would just be tighter at the end, to the extent that it would help your body to recover. It's not going to reduce the pleasurable piece. And in fact, I would, I would argue it would amplify the positive, maybe euphoric is too strong, but the positive adrenaline, dopamine state in the beginning and, and then the descent is still experienced.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  So what happens with this, which is really phenomenal, is it amplifies desired states and in states that aren't so desired, the ability to feel them and let go happens faster. The reason you're able to feel wider emotions, and it's really important also for people on Wall Street to be able to feel a range of emotions, because so much of their decision making, there are somatic cues that will happen before conscious cues come in that they have to listen to. But you feel a wider range of emotions because your body feels that you can let go faster. So my short end answer is you would, it would amplify the experience.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lea, you're, I'm guessing, I don't know for sure, that the, your book costs less than a one-hour session with you. So for those who can't afford you, or can't find you, or if you're too busy with big old fancy sports teams, I presume there's some insights that we get from your book, Heart, Breath, Mind: Train Your Heart to Conquer Stress and Achieve Success. Is that a fair plug for the book?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you so much. Now, my objective in writing the book was to bring a process that has been so meaningful and by, by description of my patients as life-changing to the world and the people that can't come into my office. And it allows people to take mobile devices, breath pacers on their phone, heart rate variability monitoring, and use different types of applications in their own home to still gain many of the benefits of this process.

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, now let's get down to brass tacks. We're coming off a year, if we're still in, an extended year of a COVID pandemic. And it's basically, you know, the year the earth stood still, right? We, industries came to a halt. People were washing their groceries. Kids bouncing off of walls, not in school, in daycare, in nursery school. This is a, this is trauma, for lack of any better word. Do you have a way to heal the world? The whole world, beyond just the individual?

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Well, I believe we all have been experiencing trauma through COVID. People fragmented from families. People's just daily routines can't engage in self-care in the same ways.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Losing loved ones, they can't even hug them on their deathbeds. It's traumatic.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  It's so traumatic. And then there's the piece where the uncertainty, the not knowing where this ends, the not knowing what tomorrow brings. That influences our bodies in...

• 45:42Speaker 02

  A traumatic kind of way too. What it does is it engages sympathetic activation, a sustained state of hypervigilance. And many people, so people will say, I'm not sleeping well right now. I feel depressed and it's just kind of ongoing, or my mood is slipping. There's physiological reasons for that. Many and most people are feeling a heightened sense of not being safe in the world, and that's internalized in their body, in their autonomic nervous system.

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just let's fix the brain and your body follows. It's the body can feed back onto what the brain is doing. Did I learn anything in this session with you, Leah?

• 46:20Speaker 02

  And specifically the heart. And so the heart is embedding these experiences as frequencies in the heart that then impacts the brain. And it's unique, and I believe it will lead to a paradigm shift in treatment and performance when we start to address physiology first, and then we add the psychological techniques. I can tell you my own clinical experience, I can have you on my couch for three years and we can talk, or I can train your physiology, and I can get you to places through talking that are much faster and more effective after we've gotten you to manage how you respond to stress and let go.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wow.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Tim Ferriss talks a little bit on his podcast Healing, about healing trauma and his experience working with me, using heart rate variability biofeedback to decrease his cardiovascular reactivity to stressors. That because of trauma, he had a heightened reactivity to specific stressors. And what that often engenders people to do then, is to go deeper even into other forms of therapy, because they're not in that hypervigilant fight or flight state. They can allow their body to go into that deeper terrain for healing.

• 47:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So if we are having a paradigm shift, and we're using physiology to work with the psychology, are there other areas of clinical medicine? That we could move this technique into and be successful.

• 47:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how about fears? How about fears? People who are afraid of flying?

• 47:51Chuck Nice?

  Phobias.

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, phobias, especially phobias.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yes, that's a great one. And I have many patients over the years who their phobias have significantly reduced, if not disappeared. And I had one woman who had a phobia of planes, hadn't been on a plane in eight years. And we got her not only on a plane, but actually able to go through the entire plane ride. It was a three hour plane ride without a panic attack. I mean, it's really profound. And she had her heart rate variability monitored. She had her breathing protocol. We planned it just like it was an Olympic game. And she had a strategy for how to shift her physiology before, during, and after that plane experience.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that is interesting. So that was able to, you were able to overcome that. That's so hopeful. Oh, my gosh.

• 48:39Chuck Nice?

  So now it sounds, a lot of what you're talking about sounds vaguely or slightly related to mindfulness and mindfulness meditation.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, meditation. What's the difference between this and meditation?

• 48:52Chuck Nice?

  What is the difference there? And can that be kind of a gateway to you? Or can you be a gateway to that?

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And frankly, you sound more sciency to me than anyone who I've ever had a meditation conversation with. So.

• 49:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you really do.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you can just tell me what's the difference and is one, and what's the overlap?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Meditation, I think, is beautiful, and I'm a big supporter of it, but it produces different effects. So I have people who have been meditators for years and they still have high blood pressure, or they can't sleep at night, or they can't perform under pressure. And so this specifically, from a performance perspective, is something that you can use during performance moments to shift from that flight or fight state into a flow state. And that's really important for performers. So meditation doesn't quite yield that effect. And the other piece is that what you're developing through 10 weeks is you're transferring the heart rate oscillations. They're like big, beautiful. Beautiful waves when you breathe at your resonant frequency versus just regularly.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  So let's say your heart rate goes from sixty to seventy. So as you inhale, it goes up sixty to seventy and it goes down.

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Per minute.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Breast per minute, thank you Neil, and then seventy to sixty. But when you breathe at your resonant frequency, it goes from sixty to ninety and ninety to sixty. So they're bigger oscillations. And what happens through the ten weeks is those oscillations that you're practicing systematically twenty minutes twice a day begin to transfer over to your baseline. So then you start to see increased heart rate variability like when you were breathing at resonant frequency, but at your natural baseline state. That doesn't happen in meditation.

• 50:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay. Okay, take that meditation.

• 50:41Chuck Nice?

  Take that, Yogi.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is all sounds so hopeful for so many people who might have had intractable problems that don't otherwise yield to simple therapy, medication, or anything else. So why aren't there statues to you out there?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  My hope Neil and Chuck and Gary is that we really educate the world so they understand the powerful benefits. It's really life changing for so many people. And we're in a world right now where everybody can use this to thrive in their own personal performance and health domains.

• 51:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I think that's where we're gonna land this plane, right on that bullseye. Leah, it's been a delight to have you on StarTalk. And as you know, we try to find other angles on sports that are informed by science. And you did exactly that for us today. So thanks for being a part of this effort. And Gary. Pleasure to have you, man.

• 51:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Always learning, always open to that.

• 51:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she'll fix that concussion thing you're still going through.

• 51:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Just hit me on the other side of the head, that'll balance it out.

• 51:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll balance it right out.

• 52:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you, man.

• 52:05Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 52:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this has been StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking out.