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Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity

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Tim Ferriss: Tim, it’s so nice to finally meet in person.

Tim McGraw: You as well, Tim.

Tim Ferriss: Really fantastic.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely. Big fan.

Tim Ferriss: Likewise. And I have not been to Nashville in so long and it’s just lovely around here.

Tim McGraw: It’s incredible and it changes every day. I mean, I get lost. Anytime I come downtown, I get lost because everything looks so different.

Tim Ferriss: Franklin looks like it’s just had facelift after facelift after facelift.

Tim McGraw: I know. And when I first moved here in ’89, all of that, Cool Springs, all that stuff was still all countryside. And I remember land being not very expensive out there, and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, I’m thinking, “Man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin, find me a club gig, everything would be great,” and then cut to two years later and it’s just everything’s through the roof. I mean, it’s just going crazy. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all.

Tim Ferriss: You just offered me the perfect segue because —

Tim McGraw: Well, that’s what I’m here for.

Tim Ferriss: Thank you. You know, I appreciate this tango that we’re getting started here. I was looking back, you were kind enough to answer some questions for Tribe of Mentors.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, your book, yes.

Tim Ferriss: My last book. And I was going back to reread it and I looked at your bio, and at the time it read, “Tim McGraw has sold more than 50 million records,” dot, dot, dot, and all of these amazing accolades. And then I looked at the more recent and it’s more than 106 million records worldwide. Your longevity is mind-boggling on a number of different levels.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, me too. It’s mind-boggling to me too, people are still putting up with me.

Tim Ferriss: And I’m wondering, how have you thought about, or how has your creative process changed over the years? What has remained the same? What has changed? Because there’s so many ingredients that you have to get right for you to, not just last, but succeed over the decades that you have.

Tim McGraw: Well, one thing that doesn’t change is great songs. That’s the first check — should be the first check on any artist’s list. I mean, I write, I write for every project and I’ve been lucky enough to have some success with some of the things I write. But for me, the song always has to win. And wherever the song comes from, that’s what it’s going to be. And I listen to songs constantly. I’m constantly listening. Constantly writing, constantly listening. I’m hard on my own songs, that’s probably why I haven’t cut as many.

But my process is pretty much the same. I think material wise, I look for different kinds of music than I used to. I still like fun songs, and if I find the right fun song, I’ll do it, but it’s tougher, at a certain age, to sing about Daisy Dukes and tailgates all the time. It just doesn’t quite ring true to me. But every now and then something comes along that’s funny and you just do it because you’re an artist and you’re telling a story and you do it. But I gravitate more towards songs now that not only have meaning to me, but I think people can find a deeper meaning in their own situation, in their own life.

Tim Ferriss: I would love for you to, if you could, maybe unpack for us a song.

Tim McGraw: Okay.

Tim Ferriss: It could be any song. And what I’m angling for is, of course, the genesis, but also what do you do when the muse goes a little quiet, right?

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Because you can’t just, as a working musician be like, “Well, I’m going to wait a year for lightning to strike.” There’s probably some process behind it. And I am not a musician, but I’m deeply interested in it. One of my favorite albums of all time is Graceland by Paul Simon.

Tim McGraw: Oh, God, yes. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I was listening to his backstory as he explained how a number of those songs came together and I was just mesmerized.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So could you tell the story of any song that comes to mind and the genesis?

Tim McGraw: Oh, wow. Probably “Live Like You Were Dying” would be a good place to start because that song came to me, it was right after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma, and Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman sent that song to me. They wrote it about my dad when they found out that that was happening and sent it to me, and I never played it for my dad. He was sick at the time, I just felt that it was not appropriate to play a song about dying to your dad who was dying.

Although I’m sure he would have loved the idea of having a song that was about him or inspired by him. I didn’t play it for him, I had the song, and in his last days, he was at our farm, in the cabin at our farm, that’s where he wanted to be for his last days, and spent a lot of time with him. And I think it was right around two to three weeks after he passed away that we went to the studio to record. And we recorded in upstate New York at a place, right outside of Woodstock, at a place called Allaire Studios.

It’s beautiful. It’s an old Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of a mountain. Beautiful. We had like three foot of snow. We were there for three weeks. We sent two semi trucks full of Persian rugs and furniture and just decked the place out for the band and myself for three weeks while we were cutting. And my dad’s older brother, Hank, I invited him to come hang with us because Tug had just died and I know he wasn’t doing very well. So I invited him to come hang with us while we were recording. And it was probably six or seven days into the recording process, and we would start late and we’d go till three or four in the morning recording.

And I remember it was about one in the morning and I had this glass booth built in the middle of the studio so I could see everybody. And there was fireplaces at each end, and the fireplaces were roaring. I had my glass booth in the middle, we were cutting this on. My uncle Hank was smoking a joint. If you know my uncle Hank, he’s passed away, he passed away last year now, but he was an All-American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for 13 years, greatest guy in the world, looked just like Sam Elliott, but was a pothead from day one. So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to thinking, I thought, “This might be a good time to cut ‘Live Like You Were Dying.'”

So we’d just finished a song, we were doing some overdubs. I gathered everybody around and I gathered Hank around and I asked everybody what their opinion was, if they felt like tackling that song. And so about 2:00 in the morning, we cranked it up and then before the sun came up, we had that song done and it was so tough because I’m sitting in the booth, in the glass booth, recording the song, directing the band, getting the parts right. And I can’t help but watch my Uncle Hank the entire time that we’re doing it. And he’s just in a puddle over in the corner. And then he’s laughing. And then he starts telling stories about Tug after.

So we recorded the song, we got finished probably about four or five in the morning, and then we just sat and listened to Uncle Hank tell stories about Tug for the rest of the night. And I have to believe that all that magic of that night, of Hank being there, Tug had only been gone for a couple of weeks, and then Hank telling the stories afterwards, I have to believe that all of that went into that record.

Tim Ferriss: There’s so many different aspects to that, each of which you could unpack. When you mentioned it seemed like a good time or it might be a good time, why did it seem like a good time? Was it a feeling? Was it a feeling inside of you —

Tim McGraw: It was a feeling.

Tim Ferriss: — as you looked at your uncle?

Tim McGraw: As I looked at my uncle, it just felt like that I was being told to cut this song. Everything, the vibes coming off of him, what I was feeling at the time, and I think we had just cut something really up-tempo and pretty rocking. And I don’t know, it was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplaces, my uncle sitting there, being so late at night maybe, there was a melancholy that sort of struck at that time. I’m sure there were some other factors that might have been involved that struck about that time, when you’re in the studio that late. But it just felt like there was magic in the air at that moment and we wanted to capture it. And we always like to say, “You could have the greatest song in the world, the greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world — which I am not — but you could have all those factors and it still not work.” And we always say, “Sometimes God just walks through the room.”

Tim Ferriss: All right, I want to pick up on that thread and then we’re going to go back to some of your family history.

Tim McGraw: Okay.

Tim Ferriss: Because I mean, millions upon millions —

Tim McGraw: That could get convoluted.

Tim Ferriss: — upon millions know your music, but I think fewer know the origin story. So we will get to that. But I also want to ask, when is the first time when you felt God walk through the door with one of your songs, where you’re like, “Oh. Oh, okay. I think maybe we have some lightning in a bottle here.”

Tim McGraw: I would like to say it was “Don’t Take the Girl,” but I didn’t feel that way after we recorded it, because I never felt like I captured exactly what I wanted on that record. Until we finally finished it. When we finally finished it, I felt like we had it, but in the process of it, I felt like a struggle on that song. But “Indian Outlaw,” because I had that song for my first album and nobody liked it. The label didn’t like it, James Stroud didn’t like it, Byron liked it, but I couldn’t talk James into letting me record it and I couldn’t talk the label into letting me record it.

Tim Ferriss: What were the reasons they gave you?

Tim McGraw: They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn’t country music, it won’t work on radio. All the things that they were right about. I heard that song the first night I moved to Nashville. I got to Nashville at one or two in the morning on a Greyhound bus, walked down to the Hall of Fame lounge and hotel where I ended up staying for a couple of weeks, walked into the bar and everybody was closing down, the band was packing up, and Tommy Barnes and Max D. Barnes were sitting at the bar. I think it’s Max D. Barnes. He’s sitting at the bar, the bar’s closing down. So I walk in and just ordered a beer and she said, “We just had last call, but I’ll give you a beer.” I sat down, so I started talking to these two guys.

So Tommy says, “Do you have a room?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Let’s go and play some music.” So me, Tommy, and Max Barnes went up and started playing music.

Tim Ferriss: Within stepping off the Greyhound.

Tim McGraw: Within stepping off the bus and Tommy played “Indian Outlaw” and “I Don’t Want To Be There In The Morning When She Wakes Up And Finds Me Gone,” which I ended up cutting both of those. Have three more songs of his that I heard that first night that I’m going to cut eventually. But “Indian Outlaw,” heard that first night and I started playing it immediately. Learned it, started playing it in all the clubs around town, the honky talks around town. When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song and we’d end up having to play it two or three times a night, four times a night because people loved it so much. And I kept telling the label, when I was going in to cut my first record, this was before I had a record deal or anything.

Tim Ferriss: So you knew it worked.

Tim McGraw: I knew it worked. I didn’t have any say so on the first album.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: So when we went and cut the second album, “That’s what we’re cutting. Period.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: And when we cut it, I felt like, “This is either going to work in a huge way or it’s going to ruin my career forever.” Luckily it worked.

Tim Ferriss: And it worked.

Tim McGraw: And I think the fortunate thing, it worked, and I think that what kept me from being sort of a novelty act, that had this sort of funky, weird song that made some noise, was being able to come right behind it with “Don’t Take the Girl.” I’ll forever believe —

Tim Ferriss: It was the one, two.

Tim McGraw: — that the combination of those two songs is what set my career in motion and gave me momentum that I probably couldn’t have gotten any other way.

Tim Ferriss: How would you describe both of those songs as a one, two punch? So the first one for people who don’t know, why was it potentially controversial or different?

Tim McGraw: Well, because it was, and I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical and it was sort of a play on Native American stereotypes and there was a lot of controversy around it. And I understood the controversy and I wasn’t upset about the controversy. In fact, I met with several Native American leaders that some liked the song, some didn’t like the song. And my answer was, “Look, I understand what your concerns are, the song’s not meant to be that way. I understand your concerns. My opinion, if you need to go after me in order to raise attention and awareness to your cause, by all means, use my song for that.” So if you like it or don’t like it, if you could make something good happen for it from it, then by all means I’m not going to be offended.

And now when I play Native American casinos, I always, when I meet with the elders or the chiefs before the show, I always say, “I have “Indian Outlaw” on my set, but I’m happy to take it out if it’s offensive,” and invariably, 99.9 percent of the time, “That’s why we hired you is to sing that song,” so they love it. So it’s been really good to me.

Tim Ferriss: And what about the follow-up straight, the one, two?

Tim McGraw: Oh, “Don’t Take the Girl.”

Tim Ferriss: Exactly.

Tim McGraw: That song was just so powerful and such a great story. It was the epitome of what country music is all about. A great story that gets right to the heart of the matter, that hits right to the emotion, that leaves it a little open-ended and makes you guess a little bit about what happened. But to this day, singing that song, there are times where it chokes me up, still, every time.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: And that song was one of my first stances as an artist to where I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not, but it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs after “Don’t Take the Girl” came out. And Walter was the guy who used to run the CMAs. Remember Walter? They wanted me to do “Don’t Take the Girl,” but they only gave me three minutes and the song’s five minutes. And I was trying to explain to them that there’s no way to sing this song without telling the complete story or it wouldn’t make sense. So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs —

Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.

Tim McGraw: Because I couldn’t do the whole song.

Tim Ferriss: Was that an obvious choice or did you second guess that choice after you turned it down? The next day or the next hour, were you like, “Oh?”

Tim McGraw: No, I think it was an obvious choice.

Tim Ferriss: It was obvious?

Tim McGraw: Yeah. And I wasn’t too worried because the song was doing so well. And I just thought there’s no upside here to doing part of this song. It’s not going to do anything for me and it’s not going to do anything for anybody else.

Tim Ferriss: A few things come to mind for me. The first is that in a digital world, or what we perceive to be virtual, folks try to do a lot virtually, and you can do a lot in terms of testing and this, that, and the other thing. But still, if you can get front of live audiences to test your material, whether you are a musician, a comedian, even in my case, as a writer, my first book was turned down 30 plus times by publishers —

Tim McGraw: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: Not an exaggeration, but because I had taught the material in front of classes for years and years and years, I knew that it worked.

Tim McGraw: You knew it worked. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: I knew it worked. That is the only reason that —

Tim McGraw: You had a practical sense that it worked.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: I could see it and I’d honed it and I’d taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn’t work, doubled down on the ones that did. And that still is just so incredibly valuable having that real time feedback, especially when you’re playing multiple times a night.

Tim McGraw: So in your process, when you’re writing a book and you’re talking about trying material out people, do you have an idea or a nugget of what you want to do and then you just start riffing on it around people just to sort of get feedback?

Tim Ferriss: I do. I would say that these days I will often test on the podcast to see —

Tim McGraw: Like segments or parts?

Tim Ferriss: Exactly. See what resonates or doesn’t resonate. So for instance, I’m considering doing a huge collection of case studies from the first book, because of course people hear “The 4-Hour Workweek” and they’re like, “Bullshit. That guy is a liar.” And I get it, I get it. It’s a controversial title, and deliberately so, but there are hundreds and thousands of case studies. And so for every reason someone might have why they object to the title, “I’m a single mom, I’ve got five kids, I have this, I have that, I’m 60 and not 20,” I have an example that has walked the walk in their shoes, right?

Tim McGraw: Right.

Tim Ferriss: So that said, a book is a huge commitment. I still find writing so difficult and I know you’ve had experience with this. So I will put together a few episodes on the podcast where I’m basically testing different sets of questions with case studies and I’m going to see, all right, look, I enjoy doing this, but how does the audience respond? At the same time, I would say for me, I think it’s very dangerous to ask your audience, or really anyone, if you have developed a creative muscle and you value it, “What should I do?” Because then you can get shaped by the masses in a way that really leads you down, I think, a lost path. In my case, I might have two or three things I’m excited about. Then it’s a question, which of these three? And I will feel good about any of these three, then it’s okay.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So I test that. I still think to this day, and I’ve thought about potentially approaching UT Austin to do a class, it’s because the feedback is so fast, they can’t fake it. Even if they say they like it, if you look at their face and they are spacing out, checking their phone, you’re like, “Mm-mm.”

Tim McGraw: Yeah, it’s not working.

Tim Ferriss: Not working.

Tim McGraw: Not working. Yep.

Tim Ferriss: It is not working.

Tim McGraw: Like you said, you try things out, musicians, comedians, writers, I do the same thing. If I run across a new song that I really like, I would have the band work it up and say, “Let’s play it a couple times live and see what their reaction is.” Now, there’s a caveat to that, because I’ve been doing this for 35 years now, so when you have songs people expect to hear and then you throw a new one in on them, sometimes the reaction’s not exactly what you want it to be, but it’s not necessarily the reaction that you’re going to get if they know the song. So there’s a little bit of a —

Tim Ferriss: A balance.

Tim McGraw: — a curve that you have to put on it when you’re doing it. Yeah. Back again also to not letting the audience determine what you do is a big — that’s really true because, like you say, you can get lost. If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you’re, I think you’re in trouble.

I think you’ve got to chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. And look, my taste is not going to match up with everybody’s taste and probably less and less people’s tastes as the days go forward. Who knows? It may grow more, I don’t know. But I have to cut stuff that speaks to me. If it doesn’t speak to me, especially if I didn’t write it, if it doesn’t speak to me and I can interpret it in a way that speaks from my heart and speaks to someone else, if it doesn’t speak to me first, there’s no way I’m going to make it speak to somebody else.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It turns into a guessing game.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Right.

Tim McGraw: And people can spot that a mile away. Whether they realize it or not, they can.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It just strikes me how similar. If you’re pursuing creative expression and longevity, by the way, in so many disciplines, it’s the same thing. It is just the same thing, right? Whether it’s podcast, whether it’s music, whether it’s writing. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, hilarious cat, Breakfast of Champions, et cetera, people can pick up any of his books, they’re really fun to read. And he used to say, along the lines, I’m paraphrasing, but “If you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you’re going to catch the flu.” Basically —

Tim McGraw: You catch more than the flu.

Tim Ferriss: If you’re trying to — catch more than the flu, if you’re trying to appeal to everybody, you’re lost.

Tim McGraw: You’re lost.

Tim Ferriss: And at least you know you have an audience of one if it’s resonating with you and the personal can be so universal.

Tim McGraw: Well, and again, we’re so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that’s therapy. You have your own built-in therapeutic machine.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So there’s the aspect of creative longevity, right? How many years you’ve been doing this again?

Tim McGraw: 35, I guess. Somewhere around there.

Tim Ferriss: 35.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So 35 years. So you have creative longevity, right? How do you continue to follow the right scent trail, which is very personal, and not get lost? Because there’s going to be a lot of temptation, a lot of external forces, expectations, right? So there’s that, which we’ve spoken to a bit. Physically, I know a lot of people are going to want me to talk about this, I want to talk about it. How do you think about physically being capable to do what you do? I mean, you are still performing. That is intensely physical. I have never performed as a musician on stage, but I know a few and it’s jaw-dropping —

Tim McGraw: Even when you’re not running around, it’s physical.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s physical.

Tim McGraw: Because of the energy that you’re exp — and in my case, I can’t sit still when I’m performing, so I’m all over the place. But yeah, focus is the biggest word I think in my vocabulary when it comes to what I do for a living, because the times where I’m not focused are the times things aren’t working. And I tell you that the last three years have been tough to focus with what I’ve gone with —

Tim Ferriss: With surgeries and —

Tim McGraw: With the surgeries. I’ve had four back surgeries and double knee replacements. And tried to work through all of it, and did work through all of it. But there was a moment in time back in the spring this year, after my third back surgery, that — or was it last year? All the years are running together. Anyway, after my third back surgery, when it just didn’t work. That I thought that I was going to really be looking at not being able to do this anymore because I can’t imagine not doing it the way that I do it. I can’t imagine — there’s no way that I’m going to go out there and sit on a stool and sing for an hour and a half. It’s physically impossible for me to do.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you’re a kinetic creature.

Tim McGraw: And I don’t know that anybody wants to see that from me. And so if I can’t go do the shows the way I do shows, and the way that I have fun doing shows, then I’m not going to give everybody what they’re paying for, and I’m not going to get satisfaction out of it. So there was a time where until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood, that I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it back. And not make it back the way I wanted to make it back. But now my focus is back, my body’s back, my brain fog’s clearing up from all the anesthesia. So I’m feeling like I’m back on a good path. I’m actually feeling like I’ve got a second wind now and something to prove. Which is good for me because I need that. I want to be the underdog. I want to be the guy nobody expects for it to work. I want to be that guy.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Make yourself a little hungry.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, absolutely. Metaphorically. And literally when I’m working, I like to be hungry. I don’t like to eat before I go on stage because I like to be hungry for that reason, because metaphorically it works for me.

Tim Ferriss: I just had my first real experience with falconry and —

Tim McGraw: Oh, wow.

Tim Ferriss: And the falconer was very clear, he’s like, “You need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt. It will not perform otherwise.”

Tim McGraw: If you’re sated, you’re not going to do much.

Tim Ferriss: And actually, “Fed up with someone,” is an expression taken from falconry because if the bird is fed up, it won’t listen to you.

Tim McGraw: Ah.

Tim Ferriss: Fed up with. It’s from falconry.

Tim McGraw: I’ll have to remember that, that’s just a good little piece of knowledge.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: I love those little details.

Tim Ferriss: There are all these little words from falconry. Hood winked also, when they put the hood on —

Tim McGraw: Ah.

Tim Ferriss: Also from falconry. So focusing in Tribe of Mentors, you mentioned, “My gym is how I get refocused.”

Tim McGraw: That’s my meditation.

Tim Ferriss: And you talked about this five rounds of 12 exercises with the bar complex, kind of adding weight and then going back down.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Do you still do that or has your training changed over time? You also mentioned a pool workout. I’m not sure if you still do that —

Tim McGraw: I do.

Tim Ferriss: But what is the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now?

Tim McGraw: Well —

Tim Ferriss: Maybe it’s changed.

Tim McGraw: It’s changed a little bit. I have to be a lot more deliberate and a lot more careful. I’m sure that my workout routine, my three workouts a day, and that’s how —

Tim Ferriss: Three workouts a day?

Tim McGraw: That’s what I did for a long time, especially on the road touring.

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Tim McGraw: So look —

Tim Ferriss: Was that just like before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner?

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Really?

Tim McGraw: Yeah. And they were distinctly different exercises. And the afternoon exercise was sort of an outdoor CrossFit thing with the whole band. So that was like an hour and a half. Then I would do my two-hour workout in the morning.

Tim Ferriss: Which was mostly weights?

Tim McGraw: Mostly weights and some cardio. And then before lunch would be running the arena or stadium stairs and doing a discipline at the top of each stairs.

Tim Ferriss: What’s a discipline?

Tim McGraw: A pushup or a squat.

Tim Ferriss: I see. I see.

Tim McGraw: Or an ab or something. And so you run all the stairs and then we’d take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever. And then at 2:00, 2:30, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff.

Tim Ferriss: Border collie. You needed a working dog that’s got to run.

Tim McGraw: So that being said, I’m sure that I hastened all of my injuries. But I remember specifically when it happened, when we shot 1883, that was pretty physically demanding. And that wore us out pretty good. That was six months, six days a week, 16 hours a day, pretty much solid. And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing, because I’d had shows booked. So I would work ‘till filming until 7:00, run and jump on a plane, go do a show, get back at 3:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the morning, get up at 4:00, try to get a workout in and then be in the makeup trailer and go to the next day.

Tim Ferriss: Can’t imagine why you wore yourself out.

Tim McGraw: Not only was I tired though, I was strangely uncomfortable on stage during that because I had this big beard on and people didn’t know what I was doing because we were filming a show that wasn’t out yet. So people didn’t know what I was doing. And I’d put on about 10 pounds.

Tim Ferriss: So you didn’t explain it?

Tim McGraw: No. I tried to a couple times, but — then I’d put on about 10 pounds of weight because there’s just protein everywhere. I mean, it wasn’t fat or anything, but because I was working out steady work, but they always had steak and stuff.

Tim Ferriss: It wasn’t fat for people who haven’t seen the series. I mean, that hotel scene with the, I guess kind of like the pajamas or whatever it is. “You want to fuck with anyone else? Want to fuck with my family?” You do not look fat.

Tim McGraw: But I’m standing on stage and I’ve got this big dyed black beard and I’m thinking, these people are thinking that I’m dying my beard to look young because my beard’s gray. I mean, my beard’s snow-white. And I had this big black beard on and then I would put on this — I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired of this.

Tim Ferriss: Were you uncomfortable because it didn’t feel right to you or because you knew the audience was a little off kilter?

Tim McGraw: It didn’t feel right to me. And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on too. So it was uncomfortable. But we got through them and it wore us out. And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee. And I’d had some knee trouble before. And at 20, I had a meniscus done, scoped on my left knee. And at 30, I had a meniscus on my right knee, but they hadn’t bothered me.

And I think my problem is I have really high pain tolerance. And then I remember specifically we were in Montreal and I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour, we were in Montreal and my knees were hurting, my back was hurting, things were starting to fall apart.

And I remember turning, just a normal turn and felt both my knees, just felt like they exploded. And I went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and from my hips to my ankles, my legs were twice the size that they were before I went to sleep. Swollen.

Tim Ferriss: That’s terrifying.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. And so I got up and went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym just on the treadmill, doing anything I could to try to stay in shape where I had to lean over the treadmill to walk because I couldn’t stand up straight, just to get walking.

Tim Ferriss: Brutal.

Tim McGraw: And then doing the show, we finished out the tour where they literally had to carry me backstage. I’d get on stage, fake it through the show without acting like I was limping too badly, and then they would carry me back to the bus after the show. And then right after that tour, I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery. And then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements.

Tim Ferriss: Brutal.

Tim McGraw: And then another back surgery after that.

Tim Ferriss: I don’t want to turn this into a Tim Ferriss confessional, but so I have the pain tolerance you mentioned, having high pain tolerance, blessing and a curse.

Tim McGraw: It’s a curse.

Tim Ferriss: Because I’ve had multiple, just had elbow surgery a few months ago, which I should have had probably 15 years ago.

Tim McGraw: I’ve had one of those.

Tim Ferriss: I just kept like, “I walk it off. It’s fine.” And shoulder reconstruction, and I won’t turn this into my litany of complaints about things, but —

Tim McGraw: I just did.

Tim Ferriss: But the back in particular, I’ve had crippling back issues for the last three to five years, which were precipitated by this crazy accident long ago where I basically caught a huge dresser falling off the loading bay of a shipping truck because I wanted to prevent it from shattering on the ground and it twisted my body around and basically tore my lat off of my body. It was a horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, because I’ve wondered this, I have a friend, his name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of WIRED magazine, great guy. I would say for his entire life has basically done no offense, Kevin, no exercise, except for lots of walking. That’s it. Lots of walking. He has, as far as I can tell, no aches and pains.

Tim McGraw: Well, walking is the best exercise you could do.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, he’s in his got to be early to mid 70s now. And so I look back and I’m like, I wonder what I would’ve done differently because I had a lot of intense training back in the day. I used to compete in judo and all these various things, took quite a few lumps from all that. And I look back and I’m like, “All right, what would I have done differently?” And I think there are certain things I would’ve toned down, probably would’ve given a slightly different prescription, would’ve still been pretty aggressive because I don’t know if I would be where I am now otherwise without that. So looking back during the, just over the decades, what would you have changed about your training in retrospect, if anything?

Tim McGraw: I would’ve been smarter about it probably.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. In what way?

Tim McGraw: Well, I would’ve trained less for sure and paid more attention to small aches and pains instead of waiting until they were debilitating.

Tim Ferriss: Big aches and pains.

Tim McGraw: And big aches and pains. I would’ve waited for that. Although, as you said, I honestly believe that if I hadn’t decided that I was just going to get myself back in shape, because I’d always stayed in shape, but after having kids and stuff, you’re eating chicken nuggets all the time. I sort of let myself go for a little while. And then I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I’ve never seen, still haven’t seen to this day.

Tim Ferriss: Why is that?

Tim McGraw: Because I think I weighed 215 when we shot that movie.

Tim Ferriss: How much do you weigh now?

Tim McGraw: Right now I’m 170. But we went to see another movie and I’d taken my kids and they were small and completely not even thinking about my movie. And of course, the very first trailer that pops up is Four Christmases, the movie that I’d just done, and my face pops on the screen. And my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me. She said, “Geez, Dad, you need to do something.” Because it looked like you could stick a pin in me and I would’ve just flew across the room. And that’s when I decided to get back in shape. But I do think that, and people will argue with me about this, but I believe it to my core, that had I not done that and decided to change my lifestyle, changed my workout routine, the way I looked and took care of myself, that I don’t think my career would’ve lasted this long.

Tim Ferriss: When was that?

Tim McGraw: Early 40s. Like 42, 43, somewhere around there.

Tim Ferriss: How old are you now?

Tim McGraw: I’m 58 now.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, that’s insane, man. You hear this, I’m sure, from lots of people, but you are in great — I mean, you look like you’re in great shape and not hitting on you, but I —

Tim McGraw: That’s okay.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. But what has your workout looked like? And I won’t belabor this too much longer, but I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They’re all a super-organism.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely.

Tim Ferriss: And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what has your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let’s call it year or something?

Tim McGraw: Year. Well, there was about six weeks where I didn’t do anything at all, which was almost impossible for me to do. And that’s probably why some of my back surgeries didn’t work as well as they should have because I tried to go back too soon and get back in shape.

Tim Ferriss: That’s the story of my right meniscus too.

Tim McGraw: I’ve tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes — I usually walk an hour or 30 minutes to warm up because for my knees to get going, my back to get — so walking is always my start out, whether it’s 30 minutes or an hour just to walk, to loosen everything up and do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching. I’d never lift heavy weights. I don’t do heavy weights at all. I try not to do dead lifts anymore because of my back. Although the doc says I can do them light, but I’m still scared of them.

I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training and then just try to do everything I do with intent and purpose and discipline and make sure everything’s lined up properly when before I never would do that. I mean, I knew what I was doing. I’ve had some good trainers in my life, so I knew what I was doing, but you get in a hurry and you fall back and start doing the same old stuff and you don’t think, you don’t put your head into what you’re doing. Now I just have to be a lot more conscious about how I move and what I do.

Tim Ferriss: And are those two hours all in the morning typically?

Tim McGraw: In the morning, yeah. If I don’t do it in the morning, it’s tough for me to do it. And then that also includes, because the older you get and especially with injuries, you got to really try to — every advantage you can get. I do a lot of red light therapy, red light, hot therapy, steam, cold plunges. I do a lot of that. So that’s a good 30 minutes at the end of the workout to get all that stuff in because I do multiple circuits of that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We have a similar recipe and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym. I mean, they are power cleaning, 300, 400 pounds, I mean, just monsters, front squatting, 400, 500 pounds. And now they do lighter weights. These are guys now, I would say kind of late 40s, early 50s. They do lighter weights. They use blood flow restriction cuffs, and they are in fantastic shape. They’ve lost a little bit of muscle mass because they’re not eating like 12 chickens a day, but that’s fine. Probably good for your longevity too.

Tim McGraw: For sure. And my goal when I work is I never want to be big. I don’t want to be a big —

Tim Ferriss: Muscle cube on stage?

Tim McGraw: No, I want to be athletic, you know what I mean? And yeah, the whole big muscle thing, I don’t want to — I’m not going to fall into that. I’m too skinny for that anyway.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think there’s a point where probably as a musician, it just raises more eyebrows and more distracting than helpful. So let’s go way, way back as promised, my delayed gratification for the audience. Sorry, it took me this long, guys.

Tim McGraw: No worries.

Tim Ferriss: But the exercise for me is so present every single day and would love to talk. Maybe after our recording, we can talk more. But for the deadlift, for instance, like Zercher deadlifts or Zercher squats where you’re holding the barbell in front really has protected my back in an interesting way for a lot of good reasons. But we’ll see if we come back to that.

Tim McGraw: Okay.

Tim Ferriss: If we go way, way back, I would — I mean, not to —

Tim McGraw: Back far enough that I can remember.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, back — oh, you’ll remember. You’ll remember. So could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate?

Tim McGraw: Oh, God, yeah. Wow. Yeah. I’d gotten home from school and Mom kept —

Tim Ferriss: How old were you at that time?

Tim McGraw: 11. I was 11 and Mom had kept in her closet like a Crown Royal bag that was full of coins, but she always put it in different places because we were always — because you had the concession stand at school, for a quarter you could get a candy bar back then, or like 10 cents, you could get a Coke.

Tim Ferriss: And just so people can put you in space, where were you at the time?

Tim McGraw: In Louisiana, a little town, Start, Louisiana where I grew up, a little farming community. I mean, it’s just a caution light and a cotton gin. That’s where I grew up. And so I was in her looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. And I found the bag and there was a box right next to it, opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn’t think much of it. And I started looking at it and I saw McGraw where a line had been drawn through it and right above it written by hand in pencil with Smith, which was my stepdad’s name. And then it said Dad’s occupation, professional baseball player. And of course, being 11 years old and growing up, we were like low, low, middle class and didn’t have any money and seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register.

It didn’t seem real. And oddly enough, I had three baseball cards on my walls and on my wall in my room. His was one of them because he was one of my favorite players.

Tim Ferriss: Tug.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. So I instantly called my mom and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was at work and I’m like, “Mom, what is this, my birth certificate? What does this mean?” And then she was like, “Oh, my God.” That’s all she said. And she said, “I’ll be right home.” And then she came home and we went for a ride and she told me the whole story.

Tim Ferriss: What was the story?

Tim McGraw: Her junior summer in high school and her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa, and they were staying in a motel that had a pool with the outdoor, like a motor court motel they were staying in. And it just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that the minor league team, Jacksonville Sons, the minor league team for the Mets, all the ball players were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left and got called up or whatever and left, she found out she was pregnant. My mom was a dancer and she had just gotten invited to try out for Where The Action Is by Dick Clark, which was like his first show, the precursor to American Bandstand and all that stuff.

So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to audition for it, and she had just found out she was pregnant with me. And then I have her senior portrait that she took that they always take at the beginning of the senior year. And she had just found out two days before the senior portrait that she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her.

And she told me the whole story and said that she hadn’t talked to him since and hasn’t heard from him. And I said, “But I’d like to meet him.” So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow or his agent somehow and he was still playing at the time. And they arranged somehow, Mom borrowed a car from her boss and some money from her boss. He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us. And we drove there, he met us for lunch. We talked for a little while and he just said, “I’m not your dad. I don’t think I’m your dad, but we can be friends,” kind of deal.

And went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record, that I brought with me, and he took me in the clubhouse, and Pete Rose signed that. So I got to meet Pete Rose. Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice. And my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So she had me all decked out. So the next year, we met, never saw him after the game or anything, never heard from him again. So of course I was obsessed, as an 11-year-old kid would be about something like that.

Tim Ferriss: What were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt?

Tim McGraw: I think at the time, I don’t think there was anger. I think there was some affirmation in it because we grew up in a very dysfunctional life. The guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mom and to me. And then the second stepdad was worse than the first one. So we grew up in really scary — the commercial you see now when footsteps are coming home and kids are scared, that’s the way our house was when you’d hear the truck drive up. So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn’t belong with that guy.

So it wasn’t a confusion. I don’t think I was young enough to register confusion. I think I was more, certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad’s a professional baseball player, and certainly in the circumstances that I was growing up in. So for me, it was sort of a ray of light in a lot of ways.

So the next year they were playing in Houston again, and I asked Mom if I could go see the game again. So she got in touch with the agent again and said he would leave two tickets, but he’s not going to see us. So he left two tickets and then it was in Houston, which was the only time I’d seen him play. Cut to the first time I saw him play, he came in and gave up a grand slam. The first time I saw him play.

But the bullpen is right along right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is.

Tim Ferriss: 10, 12 feet away.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, you’re right there. So he was warming up. So he wouldn’t see us before the game or anything. So he was warming up in the bullpen and my mom says, “Why don’t you go down and say hi to him? He’s warming up in the bullpen.” So I walked down to where he was warming up and I was as close to me and you as you were to him and he’s warming up. So I was yelling at him, “Tug, it’s Tim.” And he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t look at me or acknowledge me. And so I just sort of dropped it after that. Went back home. I didn’t use McGraw. I used Smith.

Just sort of forgot about it. Didn’t forget about it, but not even — only a handful of my friends even knew about it. I didn’t tell very many people about it. Then I got embarrassed, I think, after that, that I was just sort of thrown away.

Tim Ferriss: What happened? What changed?

Tim McGraw: Well, when I was 18, graduating high school, we didn’t have any money for college. I was counting on sports scholarships and I had a few, but I was small. I graduated high school. I was 5’10” barely and 140 pounds and getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships thinking this is probably going to work out when I get to the next level, at my size. So she was going to call about paying for college, see if he would pay for college. This is a long story. She was going to see if he’d pay for college.

I was staying out of it. I was too busy with my life. And then I remember the last high school football game, getting ready. I’m down on the field, getting ready for the game to start. We’d already ran through the banner and done all that stuff. And somebody taps me on the shoulder and it was my mom. I’m on the sidelines getting ready to go out and play. I’m like, “Mom, what are you doing here? We’re about to play a game. You can’t be down here on the sidelines.” She goes, “Well, I heard from Tug’s lawyer today.” And I said, “Okay, Mom, can we wait until after the game and we get home to talk about this?” Played the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it, and then we talked about the next morning, and the deal was they’d sent a contract and they said that he would pay $300 a year towards my college, and that I would never be able to contact him again.

And if I did, the money would — anyway, $300 a year for college, and you can’t contact me anymore. And that to me was enough to say, “You know what? Fine. My only request is I don’t even need the money. $300 a month is not going to do anything. I don’t need the money, don’t need anything. My only request is that he has to meet with me one last time, and then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I’ll do whatever.” And so we flew to Houston or drove to Houston, drove to Houston. He had retired at this point, and I just graduated high school, so I was as tall as him. And we walked into the hotel and Mom said, “Well, there’s Tug standing, checking in over there.” And he had somebody with him who was his lawyer/agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and looked at me and said, “Hi, Tug. I’m Tim,” because he hadn’t seen me since I was 11.

And I introduced myself to the guy standing next to him, and the guy standing next to him turned completely white because I looked just like him. So he knew that the gig was up.

Tim Ferriss: The gig is up.

Tim McGraw: So we sort of spent the day together hanging out a little bit, and then we went to dinner that night, he, Mom, and I. And then there was a point during dinner, just small talk where I asked Mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute. And of course, Mom didn’t want to do that. And I assured her that I had this, this was fine. And as soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and says, “Look, I’ll sign your contract. I’ll never talk to you again. I won’t bother you. I just have one question for you.” And I asked him, “Do you think you’re my dad?” And he says, “Yes, I believe I am.” And he said, “We’ll tear the contract up.” And then I didn’t hear from him for a year after that.

But after that, we ended up starting to see more of each other. And me going while I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother Mark and my little sister, Cari, which was great to come out of that. But this is what I’ll get back to. At the end of the day, I get asked a lot, and you said it right. A lot of people now don’t know the story. They knew it at the beginning of my career, but a lot of people that know my career now that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up in that world and I didn’t. So I’m glad we’re talking about this because a lot of people can understand now that I didn’t grow up in that world. But the long and short of it is when people ask, “How could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him?”

My answer always is he gave me something that was so precious and that was hope. Whether he meant to and he didn’t or knew it or any of those things, he gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in, that if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn’t hate him.

Tim Ferriss: Hope. Man, it’s a bedrock of everything else.

Tim McGraw: If everything else is gone, if you’ve got hope, you’ve still got a chance.

Tim Ferriss: I remember talking to a friend of mine, he’s got a couple of kids now mostly grown. I think they’re all grown, if I think about it. I mean, the older I get, the younger people seem.

Tim McGraw: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But, they’re adults.

Tim McGraw: Tell me about it.

Tim Ferriss: And he said, and we went for a hike at one point, and he’s just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him, I’m like, “All right, what would your advice be to an aspiring parent?” Me. I don’t yet have any kids, but I really am looking forward to that, building family. And he said, “It’s really simple. Your job is to love your kids. They don’t owe you anything. It’s not their job to love you. Number two, you have to teach them to be optimistic. That’s it.”

Tim McGraw: Yes. Those two things make perfect sense.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life, don’t let it cloud your love and guidance for them.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: I have lots of questions about family because it’s top of mind for me, but I want to ask you about guitars. Here’s why. Because I was looking up on the way here, Yo-Yo Ma, famous cello player. Picked up cello, probably got handed a cello, at age four.

Tim McGraw: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: All right. My understanding is you did not do that with guitars.

Tim McGraw: No. No.

Tim Ferriss: So how did this music thing come about?

Tim McGraw: Well, the music thing came about because of my mom’s love for music because from my earliest memory of the time I can remember my mom was always singing and playing records around the house and always had the radio wide open. So I knew every song on the radio and she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the radio. So I knew every song on the radio, would sing with my mom all the time. We’d walk around the house singing, singing in church. I mean, my friends used to give me shit all the time playing baseball because I played shortstop and the whole time I’m out there, I’m singing songs and playing around. So I was always singing to the point to where my sisters were always like, “Shut up. Just shut up. Just stop singing.”

And I still do it to this day. Somebody can say a word and I’ll sing a song that’s got that word in it. It’s just in me, I can’t get it out. So it was always something, but I was in the same category that you were thinking, that the guys you hear on the radio, guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old, they’re trained musicians. They’re guys that —

Tim Ferriss: Jackson Five.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. This is something you can’t just do unless you’re trained to do it since you were a little kid. So I got into college, that’s when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football sort of round up and to see everybody when I looked around and thought, “All right.”

Tim Ferriss: I’m going to get killed.

Tim McGraw: “I’m going to be meat on the practice squad, never see the field and get the hell beat out of me and spend all of my time here.” So I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for 20 bucks.

Tim Ferriss: Why did you decide to get the guitar?

Tim McGraw: Because I thought, I love music, I love singing, chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learned to play a few songs.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. So it wasn’t so far ahead as to, “This is my career plan.”

Tim McGraw: It wasn’t a career move. This was —

Tim Ferriss: A social move.

Tim McGraw: It was a move, but it wasn’t a career move. And I thought I could play some clubs around town. It’d be fun to do. I even thought, look, my biggest dream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I’m making money every week and playing music.

Tim Ferriss: And remind me where were you at the time?

Tim McGraw: I was in Louisiana, Monroe.

Tim Ferriss: In Louisiana.

Tim McGraw: At Northeast Louisiana, which is ULM now, but back then it was Northeast Louisiana University.

So I bought the guitar and all of my friends had moved away for the summer. It was my freshman summer in college. I had a job where I worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings, just moving stuff. And I’d come home and I’d watch CMT and watch where their fingers were on the guitars.

Tim Ferriss: Early YouTube.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, early YouTube. And then on music sheets, they’d had these little guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers went. So I spent a lot of years where my fingers were in the wrong position, but I would still make the chord. And my buddy, my roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time because I was so bad. But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn’t find it. But when chicks would come over to the house, they would grab my guitar and bring it to me and want me to start playing songs.

Tim Ferriss: Dance, monkey, dance.

Tim McGraw: Exactly. So over that summer, I learned about 50 songs and I just started playing, just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Walk. And that was my first gig. And that’s how I paid my rant for a while.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. So what was the first —

Tim McGraw: And by the way, I am still a terrible guitar player. I can play well enough to write my songs and play —

Tim Ferriss: You made it work for you. When was the first inkling or the first sign, feeling maybe where you’re like, okay, I think this could be a thing?

Tim McGraw: First off, the encouragement I got from my friends in college, my fraternity buddies, which that could go either way. When you’re trying to play guitar and sing songs from your buddies in a fraternity, that could go the wrong way. But when it didn’t, when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and telling me how good I was, to me, that was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell you, your friends to tell you that when you’re just trying to figure it out and you don’t even know anything about it really. For them to tell you that you’re good and they want to hear you do it and they ask you to sing all the time. So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds and then the owners would come over and say, “Hey, would you want to come back?”

And, “You guys are the best band we’ve had.” Stuff like that. And then I took a military science class and —

Tim Ferriss: Military science, like strategy —

Tim McGraw: Yeah. Strategy.

Tim Ferriss: Studying past generals.

Tim McGraw: And I got to know the instructor, Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an army guy and head of the ROTC and everything there. And all the guys in the class were ROTC guys, ROTC. And anyway, we took the class and it was tactics and we were in the field doing stuff. We’d spend the weekend tracking, even doing all the stuff, repelling, all kinds of stuff.

Tim Ferriss: Cool course.

Tim McGraw: It was a great course. And at the end of the course, everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader. Well, I got voted by all the ROTC guys as the platoon leader for the class for the year, so I was the top student in the class. And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine, so he kept taking me to the Marine Recruiting office. So I visited the Marine Recruiting office quite a bit, filled out all my paperwork. And one night I decided I had everything packed. I sold everything I had, sold my car, water skis, shotguns, sold everything I had.

I think I ended up with about $3,000. I had my guitar, one suitcase and my Marine paperwork sitting on my dresser. And I said, “When I wake up in the morning, I’ll decide whether I’m going to move to Nashville or join the Marines.” And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, looked over, got up, picked up the Marine paper, tore it up, put it in the garbage and went and bought a Greyhound bus ticket and ended up in Nashville.

Tim Ferriss: I have so many questions. Why did Captain Whitehead think you should be a Marine?

Tim McGraw: I don’t know. I guess because I did well in the class and we got along well. He kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played, it had to have been 15 years later after I had a lot of success. We played the military base in San Diego and it was huge, it was packed. And I’m singing and playing and I’m standing in the front of the stage. And I look down and Captain Whitehead’s right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards. He just says, “You would’ve been a good Marine.”

Tim Ferriss: “You missed the boat, son.”

Tim McGraw: No, I didn’t.

Tim Ferriss: I’m kidding. The platoon leader piece is interesting to me. What do you think, even if you had to speculate, why did that happen? Why did they vote you platoon leader?

Tim McGraw: I don’t know. I mean, I just enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it.

Tim Ferriss: What do you think? Because presumably, a bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. I think there were a few obstacles that I was able to figure out in moving stuff and how to build a bridge across. Just little things that I was able to figure out, or if I wasn’t able to figure out, just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done. But I don’t know. It’s one of those things that was really interesting to me and it made sense to me. And when you step into something you don’t know anything about and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense, it just made sense. And it really sparked my interest into being in the military because I thought, “Wow, if I can be around all these guys who want to do this and this works out, maybe this is a career path for me.” Thank God I didn’t. But I have so much respect —

Tim Ferriss: I mean, who knows?

Tim McGraw: My sister was in the Army, she was Army Intelligence. Cousins, uncles, so I’ve got a long history of military family.

Tim Ferriss: What was it that morning? It was a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a Sliding Doors moment. Such an important fork in the road. What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork?

Tim McGraw: I thought that I could always go back to that and I can’t always go back to the music. Because there’ll come a point where that’s just gone, that’s passed. But the hardest part was having to call my mom, because my mom was really intent on me making something out of myself because of how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was. I mean, she worked three jobs and going to work with black eyes and busted lips and just all the struggles that a single abused mom — well, not single, but abused mom has to deal with. She was pretty single for all intent and purpose. But I had to call her, I was in pre-law. My joke now is that I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would’ve ever made as one.

Tim Ferriss: I believe that is probably true.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, so I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school and I know how badly she wanted that for me. And for her, because of the sacrifices that she had made, because people had wanted her to give me up for adoption, all sorts of stuff. And she was a 17-year-old girl then that hung onto a kid.

Tim Ferriss: Tough woman.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. But I called her and told her what my plan was, and braced myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to give me a good wearing out, because she can do that. And what she said, it’s going to make me cry, what she said, but she said, “Son, I’m surprised you haven’t done it already. And if you don’t, you’ll never know, so you should go.” And it was so shocking and unexpected that it gave me all the confidence in the world that I needed. And then when I first moved here, back to where you think everybody grows up since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing, and that’s how they become famous, when I first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in, I was thinking, “Wait a minute, I can hang with these guys. I can hang with these guys. I can find my niche here.”

Tim Ferriss: How many shows do you think, how many gigs had you played up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus?

Tim McGraw: I mean, a year or two of gigs. I don’t know, 100 maybe at clubs. Mostly just me and a guitar, some with a band. I actually went to Jacksonville for about six months, because my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college because she had just went through another divorce and it was a terrible divorce. So she moved to Jacksonville, which is where she grew up. Jacksonville Junior College had just won the Junior College World Series. Coach heard about me a couple years ago back in high school. He knew my mom somehow. Anyway, invited me to come to play baseball at Florida Junior College.

So I thought, “All right, this is getting old here. I’m playing music, I’m not really going to class like I should. Maybe I should go out there and try and play baseball, see what happens.” So I moved to Florida, same thing. Showed up, was going to play baseball, hung around for a little while. Realized that I really didn’t want to do that because I was playing clubs at night there too, and just decided to go full-time, start playing clubs in Florida. Did that, then I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months and then moved to Nashville.

Tim Ferriss: I’m curious what Nashville did for you, because it makes me think of Bob Dylan before he was Bob Dylan. But moving from Minnesota to, I think it was Greenwich Village, moves to the epicenter. He’s like, “I’m going to find Guthrie and I don’t know how I’m going to make it work, but I’m going to figure it out. And I’m going to the center of the action.” And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very impressive investor and fascinating human, Bill Gurley, who is in Austin.

But he has a book coming out soon called Runnin’ Down a Dream, which is about pursuing passion and finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself. But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, going to where the action is. And I would love for you to describe what effect Nashville had. I mean, in a sense, you already sort of showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer after last call and then bodda-bing, bodda-boom —

Tim McGraw: You hear a great song.

Tim Ferriss: Right.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. And songs that end up making my career. I think instantly it just lit a fire under me. And when you jump into a pool of people who are like-minded and who are all chasing the same thing, there’s just such an energy that you get from everybody that’s doing it. Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney, and I were best friends, and we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals and we would compete. All these clubs, you could get up and sing and you could win $50, whoever got the most hand applause. So we were always competing to get real money.

Tim Ferriss: That’s cool.

Tim McGraw: Try to outdo — Tracy usually always won, because he was the best singer out of all of us at the time. But just running around, being involved. Every night, being at somebody’s apartment, playing music, writing songs every day, out every night, singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience of art where you learn so much, you learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing and you think, “Wow, how did they do that? How can I?” You imitate people, you figure things out. You see what somebody’s doing on stage, you see how somebody’s singing, you see how somebody’s songwriting.

It just becomes this sort of gumbo of all this magic that you find. And it just comes into every pore of your body and you just open yourself up to it and just try to learn as much as you can. And it can be heartbreaking too, at the same time. And then also recognizing where you’re getting held back. It’s where you start realizing you need to put more aspirational people around you, as opposed to people who are just being happy doing what they’re doing. And I try to tell this to my daughters all the time.

Tim Ferriss: That sounds like it could be very difficult.

Tim McGraw: It can be difficult because it’s not about dropping friends, but it’s about gathering friends that inspire you to be, that people that you want to be like, they have traits that you want to emulate.

Tim Ferriss: Could you describe an instance of when that happened and how you navigated it?

Tim McGraw: I don’t know if I can describe an instance.

Tim Ferriss: Or just why that even occurred to you, I guess, and how you went about finding those people.

Tim McGraw: Well, because I needed to learn, for one thing. Because I knew nothing about the music business, how to make a record. I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio and then play some songs I learned on the guitar. And I was an amateur, period, at everything. And so I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing and people who could teach me things and people that were willing to teach me stuff. And people that, if I wanted to compete, if I can’t compete with this guy who’s playing in a club in downtown Nashville, then I’m not going to compete with the guys who have record labels that are selling millions of records.

Tim Ferriss: How did you find those people to learn from?

Tim McGraw: I think it’s just a matter of just being out and being around people, and just learning who the people are, who are going to be aspirational to you and inspirational to you, and who the people that are going to hold you in place.

Tim Ferriss: Do any people kind of stand out in those, I don’t know, first five years, let’s just say?

Tim McGraw: Well, Mike Borchetta stands out. Mike Borchetta is who signed me to my first record deal at Curb Records. And he was somebody who I walked off the street, had a demo of a few songs. He tried to kick me out of his office and I made him listen to the songs.

Tim Ferriss: How did you get into his office in the first place?

Tim McGraw: The way I got into his office, and oddly enough, it was because of Tug. Because a guy named Bruce Windell was a friend of Mike Borchetta’s and he happened to be a friend of Tug’s. So Tug was talking to Bruce Windell one day and Bruce says, “I know a guy named Mike Borchetta down in Nashville. Maybe I can get him a meeting with Tim.” And that was it. So I got his phone number and that’s all they gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him, I couldn’t get a meeting with him. So it was during Fan Fair one year and —

Tim Ferriss: What is Fan Fair?

Tim McGraw: Well, Fan Fair, now it’s the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays. But back then, Fan Fair was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through. This was going on when, of course, I wasn’t signing autographs, I didn’t have a record level. So I decided I’m going to go by Curb Records and see if Mike Borchetta is in his office. And I’d had a demo of these —

Tim Ferriss: After him not returning anything.

Tim McGraw: After him not returning my calls. And I have to back up just a little bit because there was this little place called Po’boy Don’s in Tallulah, Louisiana, that was in the middle of a cotton field. And it was just a little wood frame shack, but it was like a convenience store/deer butcher shop/crawfish boil kind of place. And in the back of the store, they had a bunch of stumps and an old wood stove, and there were a bunch of guys all in their 70s and 60s that were all playing country music. And I happened to be out in that area one day and it was in the middle of nowhere. And so I stopped in and sat down and started playing guitar with these guys, so they kept inviting me to come back.

It was about 30 miles from school. Every Thursday night, it ended up being five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We’d all go to this little hole-in-the-wall place with all these 70 year old guys and they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I would sit back there and sing with them. And it ended up that place getting packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night, and it just became a really fun thing.

So when I moved to Nashville, Po’boy Don, who owned that, and it was a farm or two and he owned all the farmland around and just, he played the bass in the thing. And it’s his store and he just really loved me and loved to hear me sing. So I needed a demo. I didn’t have a demo, didn’t have any money for a demo. So I called him and he sent me $3,000 to record a demo. So I recorded a demo and that’s the demo I played for Mike Borchetta when I walked into his office. Anyway, I sit down, he said, “Well, leave the CD with me.”

Tim Ferriss: So you’re just, “Knock-knock, anybody home?”

Tim McGraw: Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office. And I walked past the secretary. She goes, “Excuse me.” I said, “I’m just going to say hi to Mike.” I walked in, I said, “Hi, Mike, how you doing?” He said, “Who are you?” Then I told him my name and he goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” He says, “Call me next week and we’ll meet.” I said, “Well, I have my demo here. I’d like for you to listen to it.” And he goes, “Well, leave it on the desk and I’ll listen to it.” I says, “Well, can you listen to it now?” And he goes, “No, I’m headed out to Fan Fair, I got to go.” I says, “Well, can you just listen to part of a song?” He goes, “All right, I’ll listen to a song.” So he put the song in and halfway through the first one, he goes, “You got a record deal, kid.”

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Tim McGraw: And that’s how I got a record deal.

Tim Ferriss: Halfway through the first song.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, halfway through —

Tim Ferriss: Was it the first song on the demo?

Tim McGraw: Yeah, first song on the demo. And then it was convoluted after that, but I got a record deal. So I got my foot in the door, so it started from there. But he was somebody that, when a guy who runs a record label, and you know nothing about how that works, and it’s the first record label I went to, sits down and listens to half of your demo, which you’re not even sure is any good, and says you have a record deal, well, I think you get exponentially better in that instant.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. You’re given wings in a way.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: The mustard seed.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We’re going to hop around a little bit because we could go a million different directions. I mean, we could spend 20 hours talking about your career and still not run out of material. I believe it might have been in Parade, it could have been in a different interview, but correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve said that your wife saved your life, along those lines.

Tim McGraw: Oh, God. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Why is that?

Tim McGraw: Because I was running pretty hard. I was running hard back in the day.

Tim Ferriss: What does that mean?

Tim McGraw: Well, I was drinking a lot, which, that didn’t stop after we got married, but she beat it out of me after a while. But I was just doing everything. I was a kid in a candy store, especially after I got successful. And never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before. And then all of a sudden it became a tool that was useful until it wasn’t. And when Faith came along, I was burning it wide open when we met. And she started tapping the brakes for me.

Tim Ferriss: How did she do that in a way that didn’t repel you?

Tim McGraw: Well, look at her.

Tim Ferriss: Well, right, yeah. I mean, she’s got a lot on offer, this is for sure. But I would imagine, we don’t know each other well, but that strong-willed guy, high-gear, high-intensity, high-velocity kid in a candy store. Faith is incredible on a million different levels and you also have a lot of options around. So what allowed her to dial some of those things back, which ended up being really important long-term for you and for both of you, without scaring you off in a sense?

Tim McGraw: Well, A, I knew that I was at a point where I needed to slow down.

Tim Ferriss: All right, got it. So you had the self-awareness.

Tim McGraw: I had the self-awareness that I needed to slow down at the time. B, when we met, we were 28 years old, so we were a little older and we both had success. And then C, once I met her, I didn’t want to lose her. I just didn’t want to lose her.

Tim Ferriss: What was it about her?

Tim McGraw: She’s just magic, she’s magic. Not just her singing and her looks and all that. Of course, that’s all a bonus, but as a person, she’s just magic. She just lights up a room, and she lit me up and still does. And I wouldn’t be the same artist had I not met her. I certainly wouldn’t have the career that I’ve had, had I not met her. I certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long. I wouldn’t have lasted as long. I would have burned out really quickly, I think. Especially if I had lost her during that time after I found her, if I had lost her because of not sort of bringing myself around a little bit. Then I definitely would have been in a downward spiral.

Tim Ferriss: You guys met at 28. When did you change the drinking?

Tim McGraw: It took a while. I mean, it certainly calmed it down quite a bit. And it fluctuated. It would be times where it was not bad, then times where it was bad. And then it just got to where it just got out of control, and that’s when she set me down. Well, actually, she sat me down a few times, but actually there was one morning in particular where I woke up and realized that it was 7:00 in the morning. I was going to have to take the kids to school soon, and I realized I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand at 7:00 in the morning.

I had the bottle in my hand and I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that I need help. And she goes, “All right, let’s do it. I’m with you.” And she stuck by me the whole time. And look, it’s not been a linear path, as anybody knows that’s ever gone through that kind of thing. It’s not a linear path. There’s always pitfalls and steps backwards and steps forwards, but she’s a rock. She’s a rock.

Tim Ferriss: You know, this is just a random thought, but at some point, if you haven’t met Laird Hamilton and his wife, Gabby, Laird Hamilton’s —

Tim McGraw: I know who Laird is, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. In any case, a lot of parallels in your lives.

Tim McGraw: Yeah?

Tim Ferriss: And I think also, Gabby Reese, who used to be a professional volleyball player. In any case, just a lot of parallels. I mean, intensity, right?

Tim McGraw: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: High gear. And it’s very common, at least among my friends, certainly, and even in my case way back in the day, it’s like that type of intensity can also get misapplied or reapplied to something like alcohol.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And it’s not always a selective intensity.

Tim McGraw: No, it’s not a selective intensity. And then when it becomes a physical dependency, then you’re in trouble.

Tim Ferriss: Then you’re in trouble.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: How has fatherhood changed you?

Tim McGraw: Wow. Well, you certainly see with different eyes and it changes what your definition of love is, more so than even getting married, I think, when you have children. Because there’s such a responsibility and a weight that comes with all the brightness and the light and the love that causes you to realize that that’s your true eternal life, is your children, and how they carry their perception of you forward. And it’s a scary proposition because you’re not going to do it right, nobody does it right. You just hope you do 30 percent of it right, and you just show up. But I think the thing that it changed more than anything, and I think anybody would tell you this, and it’s pretty simple, is it takes a lot of the selfishness out of you.

And part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to succeed and to push forward, but boy, it takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion and responsibility and thinking of the future in your path, which provides more structure for you. And what I’ve also found out too, is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out, that structure was so good because you had to be on the ball, you had to get up every morning at 6:00, you had to make breakfast, you had to take your kids to school, you had to help with homework, you had to go to practices, you coach softball.

All those things that keep you in a good, balanced routine. So when the kids start leaving the house, all of a sudden you start, “What am I going to do with the rest of my day?” Now I don’t have to get up at 6:00.” So it can take away some of your focus and it can take away some of your routine and it can take away a little bit of drive once the kids are out of the house. And it comes back, but at first you’re sort of lost and sort of figuring out, “What do I do with my time here?”

Tim Ferriss: I’ve got a few chapters to get through before I get there.

Tim McGraw: And then after about six or eight months, a year, then you realize, you and your wife, you realize you’re home alone, then the fun begins.

Tim Ferriss: How did you decide to be a father in the sense, how did you set rules for yourself or goals, hopes without necessarily a model for it? Part of the reason I think that I’ve delayed building a family for as long as I have is that, God bless my dad in certain ways, but I wanted to do things differently if I did it at all, very differently. And since I felt like I had no role model, I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father. And so I was like, “Well, fundamentally, if I’m helping bring some life into the world,” if they didn’t ask for it necessarily, I mean, we can debate, gets into some deep philosophical territory and religious territory quickly, but I wouldn’t want to do a bad job or more harm than good. And so I’ve waited and waited and waited and —

Tim McGraw: Well, you’re going to do a bad job.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: I mean, everybody does a bad job. There’s no training manual, but I was in the same boat. I didn’t know if I was going to be a good dad or bad, I didn’t know what kind of dad I would be. I knew that I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to be a good dad, and I knew that I didn’t want my children’s life to be like mine was. So I think in a lot of ways, maybe that the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn’t want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don’t want to do and what doesn’t work for you is better than knowing what does.

Tim Ferriss: All right, I’m going to grab that and run with it because there’s an expression in Japanese — I went to Japan as an exchange student — called hanmen kyoushi. Hanmen kyoushi is like “opposite teacher.” It’s basically like an anti-role model and they show you what not to do. So I’m wondering if there professionally have been any experiences, a tour, how you made a song or even chose a song in the first place that really taught you what not to do? Like an event, a song, a performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you’re like, “Hmm, okay.”

Tim McGraw: Oh, I’ve put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn’t. I don’t know if I can specifically say what not to do. I can say be prepared all the time is always a good thing, but I can tell you my most embarrassing moment in the music business.

Tim Ferriss: All right, let’s do it.

Tim McGraw: It might be the best way to go, is Bruce Springsteen, who I’m a huge fan of. And he’s a friend and I’ve known him for a long time, one of the greatest guys in the world, just sweetheart. MusiCares, you know what MusiCares is? Where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money and it honors a specific artist and other artists come in and do their songs. Bruce was being honored, so he called and asked if Faith and I would do “Tougher Than the Rest” together as part of the thing. And of course we said, “Yes, we would love to do it.” So everybody’s doing their songs and there’s Sting, there’s all the big guys. Playing Bruce’s songs. So we do “Tougher Than the Rest” and we do a great job on it and everything turned out good. And we’re sitting at Bruce’s table and we’re talking, and Bruce says, “Hey, man, at the end of this, we’re going to do ‘Glory Days.'” He says, “Everybody’s going to come on stage and just sing along with the chorus.” He said, “You think you and Faith would want to come up to and do that?” And I say, “Sure, we’ll come up and we can do the chorus.” We sing along the chorus of ‘Glory Days,’ so we’re up there, we’re on stage and we’re all singing along. Bruce is in the second chorus, and he looks over at one artist and he’s like, “Hey, come sing the second verse.” And the artist is like, “Mm-mm, no.”

So he looks at another artist like, “Come sing the second verse.” And that artist is like, “Mm-mm, no, no, no.” On the microphone, he goes, “Hey, cowboy hat, come sing the second verse.” And in my mind, I’m thinking, “All right, it’s ‘Glory Days.’ I know it, but I don’t think I’ve ever sung it.” And Bruce’s phrasing is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes. And I thought, “All right, I can get through the second verse of this, I can figure it out.” The words were up there.

So I step up and I have no idea where to come in. I don’t know the phrasing, I don’t know anything. And everybody who is anybody in the music business is out there. And I’m standing there with that, when your mom has caught you doing something or your wife has caught you doing something really bad. And where all the blood rushes out of your body and you’re gut punched. So I couldn’t sing the song, I’m just like — and Bruce comes up beside me, he’s like, “Ba, ba, ba,” like that. And then he starts singing the song. So then I stepped back beside Faith. Can I stand up?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: I stepped back beside Faith, embarrassed. And I stepped back beside her and this is what Faith does. She stepped away from me. Luckily, we were able to go, they shot it in a way because it’s always recorded and released and everything. So they shot it in a way that I could go back and fix the vocal where it didn’t look like I screwed it all up. But boy, I didn’t have fun that night at the hotel after the MusiCares thing.

Tim Ferriss: Did you get a lot of ball busting after that?

Tim McGraw: I did, I did. But none worse than mine, what I did to myself, because it was really the most embarrassing moment. There are a few moments where you feel like you’re over your head sometimes. And it usually works out well, but boy, I tell you, performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where everything just seems, your body defies you. You think you’ve got it under control and when you start, everything goes. It worked out, everything was fine. I did a good job, but in the moment you’re feeling like, “It’s falling apart on me right here in front of everybody.”

Tim Ferriss: I would love to flesh out the humanizing of Tim McGraw a little bit, because for people who may not know your career, they might be like, “Man, this giant just gets off the Greyhound bus and then it’s like he’s hitting a double and a triple and a home run and it’s just endless home runs. Green lights the whole way.” And I’m curious if there are any favorite failures, things that didn’t work, that ended up teaching you something important or laying the seeds for something later, or if there was ever a period of feeling plateau or stuck-ness and how you dealt with it?

Tim McGraw: There’s both of those. I think failure that I learned a lot from was my first album, which we always say went wood. I think we had one song that made it to 38 off of that album.

Tim Ferriss: Went wood.

Tim McGraw: Yeah, it went wood, so no hits on it. And so the label just sort of forgot about me after that. And so I was slowly gathering songs, but I learned a lot. I learned what I didn’t want to do.

Tim Ferriss: What was that?

Tim McGraw: The way to make music, I learned what I didn’t want it to sound like. So I slowly started gathering songs from songwriter friends of mine. Not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who were songwriters. Slowly started collecting songs. The label never even called me after the album came out because it didn’t do anything. Didn’t talk to them at all. So I collected these songs and I went to Byron. I said, “All right, I’m ready to go record these songs.”

Tim Ferriss: Who’s Byron again?

Tim McGraw: My producer, Byron Gallimore, that we produced together. I said, “I’m ready to cut these songs.” And he goes, “Well, has Curb heard them, are they approved?” I says, “Nope, we’re just going to book a session and go cut the album.” And so we booked the session.

Tim Ferriss: So it was like an album on spec?

Tim McGraw: Yeah, and we billed Curb. We billed Curb for the whole thing, we cut the album, did all the artwork. Had the CD ready with the artwork done and turned it in to them. And of course, they hit the roof because we had spent a bunch of money making an album that we weren’t approved of. And then they listened and it was the Not a Moment Too Soon album. And then they listened to the album and then they were all on board.

And the good thing about that is the first one didn’t work. The second one, I said, “I want to do this my way and to do this — and had “Indian Outlaw” — I’m going to do the songs I want to do. I’m picking all the songs, doing the songs I want to do. We’re going to cut them the way I want to cut them. And if it fails, it fails on my terms this time.” And luckily it worked.

Tim Ferriss: So that’s why you didn’t reach out for approvals because you’re like, “I don’t want some album by committee.”

Tim McGraw: No. No. It never works. Not for me. I’m sure it works for other artists, but anytime I’ve done that, anytime that I’ve let somebody else talk me into a song, whether it be a record label head or somebody else, talked me into a song that I knew wasn’t right for me, it’s never worked. It’s never worked. And there’s been tons of times where people didn’t like the song at all and it worked.

Tim Ferriss: How did you decide, or when you say you knew what you didn’t want it to sound like, can you say more about that?

Tim McGraw: Yeah. Well, you can go back and listen to my first album, you can figure it out. I just knew that there were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with.

Tim Ferriss: Well, they’re also like what other people hear and then there’s what you hear and what it means to you.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely. And you also realize quickly in this business that you think when you move to town, you find your producer, you get a record label, you get all those things and everybody knows what they’re doing. That’s not necessarily the case.

Tim Ferriss: Sounds a lot like book publishing.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. Most of the time the artist knows what they’re doing and then everybody sort of follows the artist that gets successful and starts doing what they’re doing. But there are great people like, boy, without Byron Gallimore, I wouldn’t know my right hand from my left. He’s my partner in the studio and I can’t imagine making a record without him. But you find out very quickly if you don’t have an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound and how you want your career to go. And if you don’t get into control of that and you don’t do it the way you want to do it, it might work, but it’s not going to work for long.

And there have been times in my career where I’ve sat back and decided, “All right, I’m going to let this float and let other people make the decisions. Everything’s fine for now.” And sure enough, if I don’t get involved, it doesn’t go the way I want it to go.

Now I’ve got people around me now that’s been around me for 20, 30 years that I trust. But even still, if they don’t get regular input from me, nobody knows what’s in your head. Nobody knows exactly what you picture, even though you might think they do. They don’t.

I mean, they can get close, but you have to stay involved. And I’m learning that more more, and these last few years have been tough for me to be involved as much as I want to be because I’ve been battling, just trying to get my health back. And I’m fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods. But when your focus is on and you’re paying attention to what you’re doing and you know what the path is, it makes it easier for everybody around you.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. What about the periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period and the surgical, obviously the multiple surgeries?

Tim McGraw: Well, the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought, besides this period where I thought it might be over is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records, that was a very dark period in my career. They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album that would be the final album for my contract, they would drop the greatest hits, which didn’t count against the contract. So I think they ended up putting like 10 greatest hits albums to keep me from dropping my album.

So finally, I decided I either had to bite the bullet and try to go to court with them and get out or be stuck with them. And either way, I’m taking a chance on my career.

And we battled for a couple of years and I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that. And that was a scary time because momentum’s a tough thing.

And I heard a quote the other day, it was actually a Landman. I was watching it and —

Tim Ferriss: It’s a great show.

Tim McGraw: A great show, and Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob and says, “You know that monkey at rodeos that rides on the back of the border collie and the border collie just runs around and runs around and the monkey’s just hanging on for dear life, and he can’t let go because he’ll die so he’s got to hold on?” He looked at Bill, he said, “You’re that monkey.”

And I looked at Faith, goes, “Jesus Christ, I’m that monkey.” So I feel like I’m that monkey. But I don’t know that if it’s intentional, if it’s innately in you, but there’s something about even when you know you need to take a break or even when you know you need to slow down, when things are rolling, there’s this sixth sense in your body that knows you can’t let the momentum stop because it’s so hard to restart, even if consciously you’re not thinking that, there’s something in you that keeps it driving because you don’t want the ball to stop rolling and it’s because you’re scared, because you’re scared if the ball stops rolling, you’ll never get it rolling again.

Tim Ferriss: For sure.

Tim McGraw: So that was a time when that was happening to me and I thought, “Boy, it’s going to be hard to restart the momentum.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: And then after these surgeries, it was another one of those times.

Tim Ferriss: Legal battles, it’s just exhaustion upon exhaustion.

Tim McGraw: Oh, it’s just crazy.

Tim Ferriss: And sometimes you can’t avoid it, but if you can avoid it.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. I don’t want to be involved in legal battles unless it’s just —

Tim Ferriss: Absolutely.

Tim McGraw: But I was at a point in my career that if I didn’t do something, my career was going to be over.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: And if I did do something, there was a chance it would be over.

Tim Ferriss: It was still a risk.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: What were some of the most important things in retrospect that you did to rebuild your career, regain that momentum afterwards?

Tim McGraw: Well, choosing the right partner, for one thing, which was Scott Borchetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borchetta, who signed me on my first deal.

Tim Ferriss: A small world.

Tim McGraw: I know. Who I signed with on Big Machine afterwards because I knew he was a hard worker. So that certainly being first, but I was also recording the best album I think I’d ever recorded in my life while all this was going on. Once I was cleared to record. And so I had an album ready to go by the time all the dust was settled —

Tim Ferriss: It was settled.

Tim McGraw: — I had an album ready to go and Scott Borchetta was ready and the album worked and the juice was back.

Tim Ferriss: Incredible.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. But a lot of that was my team, kept fighting for me the entire time. When I went to Scott, to his label, he knew what had happened and he fought really hard because he didn’t like what had happened either.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I would imagine that also injected a helpful amount of piss and vinegar to demonstrate, to really relaunch in a meaningful way.

Tim McGraw: Oh, yeah. I think it turned me up to 12 after that. I mean, it kicked me into high gear for sure. And that’s the way I feel now. After all of this and worrying about being able to come back and worry about if I did come back, what’s my show’s going to be like? How I was going to be able to perform? Was I going to be able to be me again?

Now I feel like that same way I felt after coming out of Curb and starting with Big Machine and getting the ball rolling again. I feel like that we’re right on the edge of just tipping that ball over the hill, that boulder over the hill and let it go again.

Tim Ferriss: I am so curious because you must get approached all the time one way or another from musicians at different stages in their careers. Maybe it’s the son of a friend or the daughter of a fill in the blank, or it could be someone who’s just coming up. Maybe they’re trying to be an opener for you. Who knows?

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Someone who is earlier in their career, I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time, but if they want to be more than a flash in the pan —

Tim McGraw: Take charge.

Tim Ferriss: — to really last. Yeah. What advice do you give them?

Tim McGraw: Take charge.

Tim Ferriss: All right. Can you say more?

Tim McGraw: Take charge of your career.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: Take charge of your career. Take charge of what you do. Be confident in your decisions. Listen, of course, you want to listen to people. Listen to people that know what they’re doing, but ultimately you have to make the decisions and you have to make your choices and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself.

And if you just coast, you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career, you’re going to have to take charge and ownership of it and you’re going to have to guide it. And you’re going to have to have your finger on the button all the time and you’re going to have to say yes or you’re going to have to say no. And you’re going to have to use your skills to manage people. You’re going to have to use your skills to be managed.

And both of those things can happen simultaneously and they have to happen simultaneously. You have to listen to smart people. But if you don’t have a vision about what you want to do, if you don’t have a plan about what you want to do, if you don’t act on it every day, it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen.

And you can do all those things and it’s still not happening.

Tim Ferriss: Right.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But if you do all those things and it doesn’t happen, back to your second album, right? It’s like you’re taking the risk that you fail on your own terms, as opposed to gambling on something that doesn’t resonate for you.

Tim McGraw: Absolutely.

Tim Ferriss: That someone’s talked you into.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So that seems to be a piece of it. Right?

Tim McGraw: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: There’s, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no.

Tim McGraw: Be willing to say no is a big deal. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Why do you think people are bad at that?

Tim McGraw: Saying no?

Tim Ferriss: Sure.

Tim McGraw: Because people want to please people.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: They want people to like them. I mean, I want people to like me, but if you don’t learn to say no, not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say, “No, that’s not right for me.” And that’s back to knowing what’s right for you and what isn’t right for you.

There could be something that on the surface, everybody that works for you says this is the perfect thing, but you’ve got to know whether it is or not. And sometimes you don’t. You know you can’t get it right all the time. There’s plenty of times you get it wrong, but I think if you go with your gut, there’s a caveat to all of this too, because there are plenty of artists who succeed, who don’t pick their songs, don’t have any involvement in their production, really don’t have any involvement in their management, don’t have any involvement in their stage design, and they just show up and do their thing.

There’s plenty of artists who do that and are successful. So there’s always exceptions to the rule, but I think for the most part, the artists who have been around for a long time, the artists I know who have been around for a long time, they take control of their careers.

Tim Ferriss: I interviewed quite a long time ago, he’s since sadly passed away, but Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from the UK, large religious figure, very well —

Tim McGraw: If you’re a Lord Rabbi, you’ve got to be a big religious figure.

Tim Ferriss: He’s a big deal and very good at conflict resolution, incredibly open-hearted man. And I recall at one point with me, he shared this quote, which I’m going to paraphrase, but it was effectively like one of the most important things in life is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.

Tim McGraw: Because they can look awful a lot alike.

Tim Ferriss: They can look very similar, and what I’ve seen over and over again with like all the startups I’ve been involved with, when I’m talking to authors who are just getting started, especially if they have a flicker of something that might ignite, is that as soon as there is a certain velocity of success, there are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing that you spent so much time getting good at that brought you to that point.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I’m wondering if there are any categories of things, so for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted, speaking engagements was one of those things where I was like, “I’m just going to end up on the road doing speaking engagements, talking about the same thing every day for the rest of my life if I actually continue to say yes to this.”

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And it’s very seductive because they pay really well.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I was like, “All right. So I’m going to say no for a year, that’s it, so that I can focus on these creative projects, writing.” Are there any things along those lines at a point where you’re like, “Okay, I need to say no to this, that, or the other thing?”

Tim McGraw: Yeah. There have been times where I probably should have said no and didn’t. I mean, there’s been times where I’ve got myself into too much work, but I’ve gotten pretty good, I think, at saying no. I think the older I get, I don’t know about wiser, but the older I get, the more apt I am to say no, mainly because you get to a point where I don’t care to be more famous.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think there’s a point of diminishing returns.

Tim McGraw: So you look at things under those lenses like, “All right. Well, this will give you higher visibility.” All right. I’ve got plenty of visibility. I don’t need to do that. The only thing that it gets into is, all right, you got to sell tickets to your concert.

So then there’s some things that you would probably say no to that you’ll say yes to just because you got to pay everybody. So there’s some compromises that you have to make to your, not principles, but to what you’re willing to do work-wise. But yeah, the older you get to more, it’s easier to say no because you know more about what the outcome’s going to be and whether the outcome’s going to be beneficial enough for the time or it’s not.

Tim Ferriss: So let’s talk about putting people in seats and tours. You have the upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar tour this summer.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: You’ve got new music in the works.

Tim McGraw: In the middle of working on an album right now. In fact, next week I’m in the studio again.

Tim Ferriss: So could you talk about, just tell us more about both, and then I mean, you’ve got family, you’ve obviously you have your lovely wife, you still have a lot going on.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So I’d love to know, and I’m sure the audience would, more about both of these, right? Where can they learn more? When can they expect things? And then also how you actually schedule your time, structure your time, these days.

Tim McGraw: Yeah. Well, album wise, like I said, we’re in the middle of an album and the album’s going to be called Pawn Shop Guitar as well. It’s a song I wrote back to the story I told you where I got my first guitar where I pawned my high school ring my freshman year of college and bought the guitar.

Luckily for me, my grandfather found out about it and went back and got my ring for me, although I don’t know where it’s at now. I think my wife has it somewhere. So I wrote the whole song around that story and we were looking for tour titles, trying to find the right tour title. I thought Pawn Shop Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told and it conjures up some good imagery.

So we start that tour, I think it starts in July. The tour starts in July. I think we’re doing three or four stadiums and sheds. The Chicks will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I’m a huge fan of those guys.

We did a George Strait tour together years ago and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago and just a huge fan of their music. And I’m excited to get out with those guys.

And then we’re doing sheds for the summer and then we’ll do some more shows as well. We’ll be doing some fairs and festivals and it’s going to be a busy year. I mean, a lot, and there’s a couple movie and TV projects in the works.

And then my oldest daughter’s working on a Broadway — she’s a Broadway actress and singer, so she’s working on some stuff. My youngest daughter’s a singer. She’s an actor. She’s in Landman.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, no kidding?

Tim McGraw: She just toured, opened for Brandi Carlile on her European tour last summer. My middle daughter works for Earth League International, a big nonprofit. She sings as well, but she’s more of the brainy — actually went to Stanford, got her master’s degree from Stanford. Worked in Congress for a long time. So they’re all doing well.

Tim Ferriss: Seems like this fathering thing you’ve done pretty well. I mean, they’ve turned —

Tim McGraw: They really got a good mom.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tim McGraw: And then my nephew, Timothy Wayne, is out there doing well too. He’s a singer. I’m the worst singer in the family, for real. I mean, that’s legitimately not a joke.

Tim Ferriss: Why do it? Now that might sound like a strange question but —

Tim McGraw: Why do what?

Tim Ferriss: Touring. It’s so grueling. I have to imagine, right? Very demanding.

Tim McGraw: It is.

Tim Ferriss: It’s physically demanding. It’s psychologically demanding. Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can’t get any other way? What is it that keeps you going back?

Tim McGraw: Well, you can’t get it any other way, that’s for sure. And they’re always good, but every third show or so, you have that one show that’s like, “This is why I do it. This is why I do it.”

And you’re right, touring is more grueling. Touring is more expensive. You pay for everything. You’re doing three nights in a row, but it’s your stage, your design, your ideas, the way you want it to look, all those things. That’s the fun in it for me, is building the stage and putting the show together.

And that’s also the hardest part is putting the set list together because after 35 years and a ton of records, you’re never going to get everybody’s favorite song in. Somebody’s always going to miss a song that they wanted to hear because you can only do, what? 22, 23 songs in a show at the most, and when you’ve got 70 or 80 singles and a bunch of number ones, you can’t get them all in.

Tim Ferriss: You can’t. You can’t get them all.

Tim McGraw: So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience and that’s the fun part for me is try to create a movie for everybody to see.

Tim Ferriss: On those magic nights, just a few more questions and then we’ll land the plane, but what does that feel like? I’m so curious because I’ve played sports. I’ve had flow states in various contexts, but I’ve never experienced anything with that type of environment.

Tim McGraw: Well, that’s what it reminds me of is sports. It certainly reminds me of football before the games. And it reminds me of the locker room, it reminds me of just when you get your uniform on and you feel like you’re 10 foot tall and bulletproof.

It’s when I put the cowboy hat, it’s like Superman’s cape. You put the cowboy hat on, you’re ready to go. But there’s a symbiotic relationship that happens. And to me, art is magic. That’s what real magic is, is art, any kind of art.

And the magic happens when you’re up there and everything’s going great for you, and you can tell everything’s going great for the audience. And you have this symbiotic electrical relationship where you’re all in this groove together and you’re all sort of in suspended animation for a while, where you leave the world outside and all of a sudden we’re all in this fantasy world that we create, that we’re all living in for this hour and a half.

And when that happens, when the whole world just sort of shuts down and you’re in this make believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you’re in for an hour and a half, two hours, where nothing else exists except for that world, then you’re in a movie. Then you’re in this alternate universe that there’s nothing but joy.

Tim Ferriss: It’s like a utopia that you are able to create.

Tim McGraw: Yes. Yes. On the good nights.

Tim Ferriss: On the good nights.

Tim McGraw: And sometimes you think it’s not a good night because your ears don’t sound great or your voice isn’t doing what you want it to do. And sometimes those turn out to be the best nights. I mean, my best basketball game I ever had, I think I scored 52 points and I had the flu and it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because I thought I was hurting the team. I thought I was playing terribly. Then he showed me the book after the game.

Tim Ferriss: Tim, if you could have a billboard, metaphorically speaking, put anything on it for millions, billions of people to see, right? Could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be scripture, could be anything, right? It could be an image. So anything non-commercial.

Tim McGraw: “Humble and Kind.”

Tim Ferriss: “Humble and Kind.”

Tim McGraw: “Humble and Kind.”

Tim Ferriss: Tell me more about that.

Tim McGraw: Because that song to me represents so much, the video too, so much of what the world needs and what we don’t have right now is humility and kindness. And of course, love should be in that as well. But without humility and kindness, we’re lost and we seem to be lost right now. And so that song to me is a beacon in a lot of ways.

That one and “Live Like You Were Dying” to me are songs that don’t belong to me. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to sing them for people. They belong to everybody. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Hear, hear. “Humble and Kind.” Tim, we’re going to link to everything related to Tim McGraw on the show notes. You’ve got lots of that.

Tim McGraw: Not everything.

Tim Ferriss: No. We’ll leave out your OnlyFans page, but we have X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. You’re not hard for people to find. But is there anything else you’d like to point people to? Anything you’d like to say? Closing comments, public complaints, anything —

Tim McGraw: I have plenty of public complaints, but I’m not going to air them.

Tim Ferriss: — stand-up comedy, raw material, anything you’d like to say before we come to —

Tim McGraw: Well, first I want to thank you for having me —

Tim Ferriss: Absolutely.

Tim McGraw: — and allow me to be a part of your book —

Tim Ferriss: My pleasure.

Tim McGraw: — one of your books.

Tim Ferriss: Thank you.

Tim McGraw: And enjoy listening to you, and I hope we can do it again.

Tim Ferriss: Absolutely. It’s been such a pleasure. I’ve wanted to connect in person for years. So much fun.

Tim McGraw: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I hope it’s not the last time. I love Nashville, so I’ll be back.

Tim McGraw: Good. Well, and when you’re back, we’ll talk again.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Absolutely.

Tim McGraw: I’ll cook dinner for you one night.

Tim Ferriss: I’m in.

Tim McGraw: Or have Faith cook dinner for you. It’d be better. Although I’m a pretty good cook.

Tim Ferriss: That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening, we will put links to anything and everything we can find. Obviously, all the ways to find what you’re up to, the tour, the music when it’s ready. And so —

Tim McGraw: There is one new song, to interrupt you, that people can find that we didn’t put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on my socials, but it’s a song called “Different” that I think people should listen to.

Tim Ferriss: All right. We will find “Different,” and we will link it in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast for folks. And as always, until next time, this is how I close almost every episode, a bit kinder than as necessary, not just to other people, but also to yourself. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete as Jack Kornfield has said. And also as always, thanks for tuning in guys. See you next time. Thank you, Tim.

Tim McGraw: Thank you. Adios.

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The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity (#852) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity (#852)

2026-02-05 02:13:15

Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw) is a Grammy Award-winning entertainer, author, and actor who has sold more than 106 million records worldwide, with 49 number-one singles and 19 number-one albums.

He is one of the most-played country artists since his debut in 1992. He’s been named Nielsen BDS Radio’s Most Played Artist of the Decade for all music genres and also had the Most Played Song of the Decade for all music genres.

Tim has four New York Times bestselling books and has acted for both film and television, including the movies Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side and Paramount Network’s Yellowstone. He recently starred alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliott in Yellowstone’s prequel—the three-time-Emmy-nominated 1883.

You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour at TimMcGraw.com.

Please enjoy!

This episode is brought to you by:

Circle complete community platform for your community, events, and courses—all under your own brand: Circle.so/Tim
Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/Tim
AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/Tim

My Story
Salvation through Starvation?
Energy Production
Anti-Inflammatory Effects
Metabolic Psychiatry
How to Get Started + Future Non-Diet Options + Warnings
Additional Resources

Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Transcripts

This episode (coming soon)
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SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Tim McGraw

Albums

Graceland by Paul Simon
Not a Moment Too Soon by Tim McGraw
Pawn Shop Guitar by Tim McGraw (Upcoming)

Record Labels & Studios

Places

Organizations, Institutions, & Companies

People

Related Resources

Kurt Vonnegut on Writing | Goodreads
Tim McGraw Sends Emotional Message as He Returns to the Stage Following Health Issues | Parade
How Falconry Changed Language | BBC
8 Reasons Why Zercher Squats/Deadlifts are the GOAT | Electrum Performance
Tim McGraw Explains Why He Couldn’t Be ‘Angry’ with His Dad | Today
Country Superstar Announces Massive 2026 Tour With Very Special Guests | Parade
Tim McGraw Shares His Family’s Military History | KFDI
Tim McGraw’s Faith Hill Tribute Has Fans Calling Them ‘Beautiful Soulmates’ | Parade
Hanmen Kyoushi): “Teacher” of Bad Cases | Takashi’s Japanese Dictionary
Tim McGraw Performs “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” | Academy Awards 2015
Country Music Memories: Tim McGraw Releases His Debut Album | The Boot
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on Powerful Books, Mystics, Richard Dawkins, and the Dangers of Safe Spaces | The Tim Ferriss Show #455

TIMESTAMPS

[00:01:51] Two Tims walk into a podcast.
[00:02:56] “The song always has to win.”
[00:05:02] Recording “Live Like You Were Dying” at 2 a.m. with Uncle Hank in a puddle in the corner.
[00:09:22] Sensing when the moment is right.
[00:10:29] The song Nashville hated that Tim heard his first night off the Greyhound.
[00:13:18] The one-two punch that saved Tim from novelty-act purgatory.
[00:15:22] Turning down the CMAs because the song wouldn’t fit the time slot.
[00:20:11] Why you can’t let the audience steer the ship when testing material live.
[00:25:51] Coping with the physical toll of performing for three decades.
[00:34:04] The Four Christmases wake-up call that changed everything.
[00:37:42] What training smarter looks like for Tim.
[00:41:22] When Tim found out his dad was a baseball legend whose picture was already on his wall.
[00:54:53] Important advice for aspiring parents.
[00:55:41] When Tim pawned his high school ring for a $20 guitar.
[00:58:27] Learning guitar from CMT videos and fret diagrams.
[00:59:37] The morning Tim tore up his Marines paperwork and bought a Greyhound ticket to Nashville.
[01:07:20] Nashville as creative accelerant: Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney, and $50 singing competitions.
[01:12:45] Po’boy Don’s crawfish shack: The demo that launched Tim’s career.
[01:15:39] How Faith Hill saved Tim’s life.
[01:18:33] The 7 a.m. bottle of whiskey cry for help.
[01:20:27] Parenthood as selfishness-removal surgery.
[01:24:28] Tim’s “Glory Days” disaster with Bruce Springsteen.
[01:28:30] When Tim’s first album “went wood” — the failure that taught him everything.
[01:33:29] A rodeo monkey no longer: When Tim kicked his record company to the curb.
[01:37:35] Tim’s most important advice for artists.
[01:43:41] Announcing the summer 2026 Pawn Shop Guitar tour with The Chicks.
[01:46:28] If it’s so grueling, why does Tim still tour?
[01:49:50] Tim’s “Humble and Kind” billboard.
[01:50:50] Parting thoughts and a parting gift: “Different” — the new song only on social media.

TIM MCGRAW QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for 20 bucks. I thought, ‘I love music, I love singing, chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learned to play a few songs.'”

— Tim McGraw

“The song always has to win.”

— Tim McGraw

“We always like to say, ‘You could have the greatest song in the world, the greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world—which I am not—but you could have all those factors and it still not work.’ And we always say, ‘Sometimes God just walks through the room.'”

— Tim McGraw

“If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you’re in trouble. You’ve got to chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. … If it doesn’t speak to me first, there’s no way I’m going to make it speak to somebody else.”

— Tim McGraw

“We’re so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that’s therapy. You have your own built-in therapeutic machine.”

— Tim McGraw

“If everything else is gone, if you’ve got hope, you’ve still got a chance.”

— Tim McGraw

“Maybe the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn’t want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don’t want to do and what doesn’t work for you is better than knowing what does.”

— Tim McGraw

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Want to hear another episode with someone who took charge of their career by learning to say no? Listen to my conversation with Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, in which we discussed lessons from his father, 30+ years of diary notes, the art of catching greenlights, getting “unbranded” from Hollywood typecasting, and much more.

The post Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity (#852) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

How I Beat Lyme Disease with The Ketogenic Diet — Science, How-To Protocols, and 10+ Years of Zero Symptoms

2026-01-31 01:04:09

I started writing this as a reply on X to Greg Yang, co-founder of xAI, who recently stepped down from xAI to address his debilitating case of Lyme disease.

Ultimately, I decided that a blog post could provide more detail and allow proofreading by credible researchers, so here we are.

Before we dive in, a disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet. I was hesitant to publish this, as I know how much flak I’ll get, but the results and underlying science are just too interesting.

The following is for informational purposes only. Please consult with your doctor and read the warnings at the end.

MY STORY

Growing up on Long Island (see this link), I’ve contracted Lyme disease twice. Most of my childhood friends and neighbors have had tick-borne diseases. My second case of Lyme in 2014 was incredibly severe, but it was resolved in 4–6 weeks with an unorthodox approach: strict ketosis. I’ve now been 100% asymptomatic for more than 10 years.

I have since replicated the results with four out of four friends who were effectively disabled by Lyme disease. In this post, I’ll cover some of the science, simple how-to instructions, lots of open questions, and upcoming tech options that might offer some benefits of keto in a headset, no diet required.

Am I saying the ketogenic diet will work for everyone? Of course not. I am saying that, compared to a lot of complex or questionable treatments for Lyme, ketosis might be a simple “first, do no harm” approach with minimal downside for most people. Drugs often have off-target effects, and we’ve scientifically studied ketosis for more than 100 years. Furthermore, ketosis has been a mainstay of human evolution for millennia. So perhaps it’s worth testing for a few weeks to see if you’re a responder? Lots of caveats with this, but I’ll unpack it.

Let’s begin with my personal case.

As mentioned, I twice contracted Lyme disease and co-infections on Long Island, confirmed with local testing, best-of-class lab testing in NYC, and lastly with specialists at the Stanford Infectious Diseases Clinic. I mention the three separate rounds of testing, as a lot of people are misdiagnosed with Lyme.

Many conditions have similar symptoms to Lyme disease, including Long COVID, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Disambiguating takes proper testing from legitimate MDs, in my opinion. There are simply too many charlatans and well-intentioned amateurs running around.

I had no rash in either instance, which is true in 20–30% of cases. Unfortunately, I believed the local folklore of “no rash, no Lyme” and, in the 2014 instance, I waited until symptoms were debilitating: severe joint swelling, slurred speech, forgetting common words and friends’ names, etc. I didn’t seek proper help until my assistant said, “Tim, I’ve seen you tired, I’ve seen you sick, and this is something else. You need to see a doctor.”

So, I did. Sadly, after proper diagnosis and courses of antibiotics, which I still believe are critical, most symptoms persisted. I operated at ~10% capacity for 9 months and was on the verge of accepting that my mind, body, relationships, business, and more might be handicapped forever. I felt like I had advanced dementia, fatigue often kept me bedridden, and arthritis-like pain wracked my entire body.

What happened at 9 months?

I started brainstorming subtraction. I’d already tried addition: adding drugs, supplements, and all manner of sketchy “alternative” options. If anything, some of them seemed to be generating more problems.

This is how I returned to the ketogenic diet.

Fortunately, I’d used the ketogenic diet in college for various sports experiments, and I decided to test whether or not picking a new fuel and harnessing anti-inflammation (more on these later) would improve things. I knew I could get into clinical ketosis within 3–4 days.

Within a week, all of my cognitive symptoms were gone.

After roughly 4–6 weeks of a strict ketogenic diet (<20 grams of carbohydrates per day), I completely and durably fixed all of my symptoms. It’s been more than a decade, and none of the symptoms have returned. It was a Hail Mary that worked.

And here is perhaps the most surprising part—I didn’t need to stay on the ketogenic diet. I went back to the slow-carb diet after 4–6 weeks of keto, and my diet has varied tremendously since. Whatever it did seemed to stick.

But there was one rub.

I had no satisfying explanation for why it worked.

I had a few plausible theories, sure, but nothing watertight. I knew the short-term effects of ketosis… but a durable fix? How was that possible?

The lights went on in late 2025 when I again interviewed Dr. Dominic D’Agostino, one of the world’s leading researchers and synthesizers of ketones.

Let’s start with the biggest missing piece he provided.

SALVATION THROUGH STARVATION?

Lyme disease spirochetes (Borrelia burgdorferi) are largely dependent on glycolysis for energy production, as they lack a tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and oxidative phosphorylation pathways. In simple terms, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease primarily use carbohydrates for fuel. I had no idea and simply got lucky.

But is it really as simple as starving the bacteria out? 

This might not apply to all cases, as such spirochetes can also use alternate fuels like glycerol and pull off all sorts of evolved tricks. LLMs seem to raise an eyebrow at the above theory, but we have at least an N (sample size) of 5 with a 100% success rate. It’s not a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), but a lot of compelling science starts with a few interesting case studies.

This glycolysis-dependent piece of the puzzle seems to be critical, but might there be alternate explanations for why keto seems to work? A few possibilities come to mind, and perhaps they synergize to produce the “remission” I and others experienced.

Below are a few leads.

ENERGY PRODUCTION

A ketogenic diet (KD) has a host of fascinating effects on mitochondria, the so-called “powerhouses” of the cell that generate most of your energy (ATP). This was one of my placeholder theories in 2014, as researchers started exploring this terrain seriously in the 1990s.

KDs can help you produce more mitochondria (biogenesis), increase energy production, and arguably improve mitochondrial quality by recycling and replacing them (mitophagy). Net-net, this could be a reboot of your metabolic machinery—you’re remodeling your mitochondria.

Could that address some of the fatigue symptoms of Lyme? Is 1–2 months sufficient to produce these changes and have them stick? Were my later periods of regular fasting—typically three contiguous days of water fasting per quarter—key for reinforcing what the KD kicked off? We don’t really know.

But even if 1–2 months of KD isn’t enough to overhaul your machinery, there are acute energy benefits that could explain my one-week turnaround of cognitive symptoms.

Ketones supply an alternative fuel to glucose, and in some contexts (impaired glucose metabolism) ketones are vastly superior.¹ Perhaps this is partially why, even if not in ketosis, I will take a ketone salt or monoester before recording podcasts: I’m significantly sharper without having to mainline caffeine in the afternoon and sacrifice sleep quality later.

There are documented cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients who respond incredibly well to exogenous (supplemental) ketones (listen to 2:21 here), and I’ve heard clinicians describe AD patients who normally fail the clock test (drawing a clock) but who can succeed without any difficulty after a single 10–30-gram oral dose of exogenous ketones. Something interesting seems to be happening. Alzheimer’s is sometimes referred to as “type 3 diabetes.” Could a ketogenic diet fix part of the underlying problem, or are ketones simply working around damage (e.g., amyloid plaques and tau tangles)?

I don’t know, but here’s what I do know: every time I cross ~1 mmol/L blood concentration of ketones as measured by any commercial ketone meter (e.g., Keto-Mojo or Precision Xtra), a light switch is flipped and I have extra gears. I’ve seen this repeatedly since my first keto experiments in the mid- and late 1990s. Of course, your personal threshold will likely differ, but I can turn this on at will with exogenous ketones; a 1–2-day water fast; or a 2–4-day, low-calorie KD.

Curiously, these extra gears seem to often kick in for many people who are not obviously glucose-impaired. Why? Perhaps it relates to the next bullet.

And perhaps people who aren’t glucose-impaired at the whole-body level (i.e., as assessed by standard blood tests) can nonetheless be glucose-impaired at the brain level? I’d bet money on it.

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS

The primary circulating ketone, beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), appears to dial down inflammatory signaling through multiple pathways. In other words, some ketones have direct anti-inflammatory effects.

The next paragraph is technical, so feel free to skip, but there are some juicy bits.

BHB inhibits the NLRP3 inflammasome (a molecular trigger for cytokines like IL-1β), engages the HCA2/GPR109A receptor on immune cells, and may influence gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms like histone β-hydroxybutyrylation. The claim that BHB is a potent HDAC inhibitor is debated in the literature (if true, there are significant cancer implications), but net-net, for some people, ketosis seems to reduce systemic inflammation.

Lyme-induced inflammation can produce vasoconstriction and cause a range of problems (cold hands/feet, dysautonomia), but ketones (D-BHB and L-BHB) have a remarkable effect on improving cardiac output and blood flow by reducing peripheral vascular resistance. This is of personal interest, as both I and my mom have long-standing Raynaud’s Syndrome, but we never thought of any connection to Lyme. My mom has had both Lyme and alpha-gal syndrome, which was transmitted by the Lone Star tick. Now she can’t eat mammalian protein without risk of life-threatening anaphylaxis.

For more on the anti-inflammatory potential of ketones, I suggest you listen to this segment here from my very first conversation with Dominic.

Broadly speaking, anti-inflammatories can have some very fast effects. For instance, if you have minor aches and pains that make it a little painful to walk, you might be able to take two Advil and go for a pain-free walk 60 minutes later.

By extension, how quickly could the anti-inflammatory effects of ketones on a KD translate to less painful or pain-free joints? Smoother and faster cognition? Less or no fatigue? Once again, in my personal experience, all of these and more changed within a week of tipping past 1 mmol/L concentration of BHB as measured by a finger stick with a Precision Xtra or Keto-Mojo device.

Last but not least, guess what? Neuroinflammation impairs glucose metabolism in the brain, and impaired glucose metabolism worsens neuroinflammation.

Everything in this post seems tightly interrelated. That’s good news. Ketosis might be a hammer that hits several nails at once.

Summary: Fasting-induced ketogenesis can alter host metabolism in ways that increase antibiotic sensitivity in bacteria and modulate immune and inflammatory responses. In principle, these effects could enhance standard Lyme disease treatment by strengthening antibiotic efficacy and improving host immune function. Unlike the bacteria in this study, Borrelia burgdorferi is an obligate glycolytic (e.g. no TCA/ETC), so the rationale for Lyme management is stronger.

“β-hydroxybutyrate inhibits Plasmodium falciparum development and confers protection against malaria in mice“

Summary: Though the malaria study is not about Lyme disease, it demonstrates that ketosis disrupts pathogen development and modulates host immune/inflammatory pathways. This causes an environment less favorable for the pathogen while enhancing host immune and mitochondrial resilience.

METABOLIC PSYCHIATRY

This section will overlap a lot with the preceding two.

Lyme disease is sometimes called “The New Great Imitator” because its symptoms overlap with so many conditions. Some are autoimmune, but many are psychiatric, including but not limited to depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and ADHD. There’s also emerging data that infection is linked to these disorders and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Chris Palmer, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, has developed what he calls “the brain energy theory of mental illness.” In my conversation with him on the podcast, he argued that mental disorders may, in many cases, be metabolic disorders of the brain. His core insight: when brain cells are metabolically compromised, they can become either underactive (shutting down from lack of energy) or hyperexcitable (misfiring when they shouldn’t).

In his model, a ketogenic diet may help by providing an alternative fuel source to struggling brain cells.

The keto–mental health connection isn’t new. Ketogenic diets have been used clinically for 100+ years to treat epilepsy. Centuries ago, churches sometimes locked “possessed” people in a room without food, and lo and behold, the “demons” disappeared after roughly enough time to metabolically switch to ketosis.

Ketogenic diets appear to act through multiple, sometimes overlapping pathways, including those affecting neurotransmission, inflammatory signaling, and gene expression. I bolded those we haven’t directly addressed in this piece.

Furthermore, the ketogenic diet dodges some of the metabolic and off-target side effects associated with many psychiatric medications, especially antipsychotics.²

For more on this, I recommend Chris’s book Brain Energy and our full conversation. I also chatted with Dave Baszucki, founder of Roblox, about how he used metabolic psychiatry to save his son, who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

HOW TO GET STARTED + FUTURE NON-DIET OPTIONS + WARNINGS   

How to Get Started

In brief, if you’ve been diagnosed with Lyme, it might make sense to try 1–2 months of a strict ketogenic diet DURING or AFTER antibiotics but BEFORE you try speculative treatments with non-trivial or unknown downside risks.

Of course, speak with your doctors first.

ChatGPT and similar LLMs can help cover most bases and even meal plans, but be sure to specify “less than 20 grams per day of carbohydrates (CHO).” People can get cute with “net-carbs” and outsmart themselves. I prefer a wide margin of safety when stakes are high (e.g., Lyme symptoms).

If you like books, amidst a sea of terrible options, there are a few that are pretty good.

From Dr. Dominic D’Agostino:

The Ketogenic Bible: The Authoritative Guide to Ketosis by Jacob Wilson and Ryan Lowery (384 pages; 4.6 stars)
Clearly Keto: For Healthy Brain Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention by Dr. Mary Newport (560 pages; 4.5 stars)

From a CEO I can’t name, who has access to thousands of patients who’ve tried a ketogenic diet in various forms:

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to Living the Keto Lifestyle by Amy Ramos (158 pages; 4.2 stars)
The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable by Stephen D. Phinney and Jeff S. Volek (Highly accurate but longer and more science-heavy) (316 pages; 4.5 stars)

My Personal Protocol:

For the most part, I think that trying to eat keto-friendly bagels and faux-desserts is the path to disappointing results.

Especially if you’re just doing a trial run for a few weeks, I like to keep it simple. Do fool-proof first, then, if you want, layer in clever and crunchy after at least two weeks of 1 mmol/L blood readings, and only then with constant ketone monitoring.

To jumpstart keto, I personally like to first do intermittent fasting (IF) for at least a week, only eating within an eight-hour window each day. IF alone can dramatically change your blood work, OGTT, and more. Note that it can take your body 1–2 weeks to overcome the first 12 hours or so of lower energy and occasional irritation, but when you do adapt, it pays long-term dividends.

If you adapt to IF, it’ll make future keto transitions a lot easier and likely eliminate any fogginess, low energy, or “keto flu” symptoms. It helps jumpstart your ketogenic machinery without extended ketosis.

But if you’re in a rush to test keto and want to bite the bullet, you can also just start with a lower-calorie keto diet. The sub-maintenance calories will dramatically speed things up.

In my case, I default to something like the below at a bodyweight of around 175 lbs.:

• 9am Morning – Coffee or tea with 2 tbsp heavy cream (NOT half and half)

• 11am Mid-morning – For the first week of keto and sometimes longer, I’ll mix KetoSpike cocoa exogenous ketone powder into my coffee or tea. This remedies early fatigue.

• Cardio, if any Zone 2 to be done

• ~2pm Lunch – Two cans of chub or jack mackerel mixed with 2 tbsp MCT oil + 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar + salt/pepper. Cheap, fast, and surprisingly good. This will clock in at around 500–700 calories.

• 5pm Weight training, if any

• 7pm or 8pm Big dinner. This will contain the rest of my calories for the day.
Chopped ribeye on huge salad with extra virgin olive oil, plus a side of creamed spinach

Chicken and cheese plus keto-friendly veggies like broccoli and cauliflower

Lamb chops plus keto-friendly goulash, etc.

You can always add fat with some additional heavy cream in a beverage, as has been done successfully for more than a century with epileptic kids, or a few dollops of sour cream or a dessert of keto-friendly cheeses.

• Post-dinner – Walk the dogs and curb any glucose/insulin response from the large meal.

That’s it. Once you’re in proper ketosis, you probably won’t feel much hunger. It’s quite liberating to reorient to hunger and eating that isn’t compulsive and full of snacking. If you really want to snack, eat more at meals. If you still want to snack, it’s habit and not physiology talking.

Postscript:

Supplements: I take electrolytes (sodium, magnesium, and potassium) as pills or packets at least twice a day. Especially if you’re new to keto, this will be important for avoiding dizziness, cramping, and sleep problems. Just ensure no sweeteners, maltodextrin, etc. are hiding in the product. You’d be surprised what some popular brands do.

Fat: Don’t try to do a low-fat, high-protein version of keto. For reasons we’ll skip here, it’s very hard to make work and not worth the gamble. Aim to consume at least 70% of your daily calories from fat.

Snacks: Be careful with snack foods, even keto-friendly-ish macadamia nuts, which can add up and knock you out of ketosis. Avocados also contain more carbs than you might think. Once mildly knocked out of ketosis, some people need multiple days to regain footing and end up feeling depleted, exhausted, and awful. For beginners, treat ketosis as binary and watch your exact grams of carbs. Play it safe so you don’t end up in metabolic purgatory.

Non-Keto Keto Options and Future Tech

Can you get some of the benefits of a ketogenic diet without eating meat, eggs, and cheese all the time? It sure would be nice.

And, yes, you can make a KD much more appealing, eating a surprising quantity of salads and greens, but I’m always looking for tools and approaches that might make its benefits more accessible.

Here are a few that I’m tracking closely:

Intermittent fasting by itself. At least a 16-hour window of fasting. Read up on neuroscientist Mark Mattson and “flipping the metabolic switch.” Here is one oldie-but-goodie, but note that Mark suggests 16–⁠18 hours of fasting instead of the 12-hour onramp mentioned in that publication. This is also referred to as 16:8 time-restricted eating. 16:8 or 18:6 is a goldmine and perhaps my most surprising personal change of the last two years, in addition to accelerated TMS.

The “metabolic switch” relates to depleting your liver of glycogen, requiring around 16 hours for most people, which then leads to a more ketotic state.

Bioelectronic medicine (e.g., vagus nerve stimulation [VNS]). Dr. Kevin Tracey and others have described the “inflammatory reflex,” whereby vagus signaling can modulate immune activity. Early clinical work has explored VNS in inflammatory conditions (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis). This is not a Lyme treatment per se, but it’s plausible that a VNS device, particularly implants or an ear-based transauricular VNS (taVNS), could be used to decrease inflammation-driven symptoms. There are also some potentially interesting applications to chronic pain management via HMGB1 (special thanks to Ulf Andersson).

Caveat emptor – there is a LOT of BS out there related to vagus nerve stimulation.

Listen to my interview with Kevin, and I’m hoping to help make easier auricular devices more widely available soon. For a possible alternative route, also read up on the applications of famotidine (Pepcid) to the vagus nerve and the inflammatory reflex, which has applications to COVID and more. As always, speak with your doctors before using.

Ultra-low-intensity magnetic approaches (Fareon). Stealth startup Fareon has published preclinical work suggesting microtesla-range magnetic fields can influence neuroinflammation and disease models. This is early science, not clinical guidance, but I became an early investor in this company for a lot of reasons. One of them: I’m hoping it might offer some of the anti-inflammatory benefits of keto with simple, at-home hardware. Their tech is not yet available outside of trials, but I’m hoping to help expand that. You can sign up for their email list to be the first to know.

Others?
Do you have other ideas or suggestions? If so, please let me and readers know in the comments section of this blog post.

Caveats with Lyme Disease

It bears repeating: Many conditions have similar symptoms to Lyme disease, including Long COVID, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), and more. Disambiguating takes proper testing from legitimate MDs, in my opinion.

It is also worth noting, however, that data suggest a ketogenic diet might help with symptoms of nearly all of the above(!):

MS → strongest early clinical evidence

Fibromyalgia → promising pilot data

CFS/ME → strong theoretical fit, weak trials

Long COVID → emerging hypothesis

RA → indirect anti-inflammatory benefit

Returning to the caveats, there is another risk lurking behind the label of “Lyme disease.” Some people go shopping for the Lyme diagnosis. If you keep seeing doctors long enough, especially once you venture into “doctors” at the fringe, I promise that you will eventually get a Lyme diagnosis. Some such patients are simply desperate for any explanation and treatment that can provide relief. Others are subconsciously hoping for an external cause for depression and lethargy caused by issues like a rocky marriage, alcoholism, social isolation, etc. It’s a lot easier to take pills or get IVs rather than fundamentally changing the tectonic plates of your life. I get it, and I’ve been there in different contexts.

In the case of Lyme disease, there are entire cottage industries that have popped up to happily take your money for endless treatment that won’t do much.

So, good to be aware and always ask: If I took Lyme off the table, what else might possibly explain this?

Keto Warnings

If you’re on insulin, sulfonylureas, GLP-1 agonists (e.g., Ozempic, Zepbound), or any SGLT2 inhibitor (the “-flozin” drugs), don’t attempt a ketogenic diet without clinician supervision, as carb restriction/fasting can trigger euglycemic ketoacidosis, and medication doses may need rapid adjustment.

In fact, please be sure to always speak with your doctor, m’kay?

Just note that you might need to offer them some reading on the ketogenic diet, as it isn’t a common intervention. This blog post or linked studies and podcasts offer a few starting points.

Also avoid DIY keto if you are pregnant/breastfeeding, have significant kidney/liver/pancreatic disease (including prior pancreatitis), or have a history of eating disorders.

All that said, overall, humans are incredibly well evolved to handle ketosis, especially for the brief periods of time necessary to notice before-and-after changes in the context of Lyme.

One final addendum from Dominic on ALS, at his request:

“FYI, my friend Deanna Tedone was diagnosed with rapidly progressing ALS 17 years ago (given 3 years to live, at most). Her dad, Dr. Vince Tedone, was a world-famous orthopedic surgeon who introduced arthroscopic surgery to the Southeastern United States He developed the Deanna Protocol, and we proved efficacy in mice: Metabolic Therapy with Deanna Protocol Supplementation Delays Disease Progression and Extends Survival in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Mouse Model.

Deanna tested positive for Lyme disease, and we think this may have been the cause of her ALS. Their foundation is Winning The Fight, and they’re hoping to fund more research on the link between Lyme and neuro diseases.”

For now, that’s all, folks!

Illness and medicine can be squirrely beasts, and I myself have been tempted to give up at times. It can seem like the deck is stacked against you. But sometimes there actually is a simple light of hope at the end of the tunnel.

The ketogenic diet is not a panacea, but its applications beyond weight-loss are compelling. For some, like me and my friends, they can be life-changing.

I sincerely hope this post is helpful.

All the best to you and yours,

Tim Ferriss

Thanks to everyone who proofread this post. Any remaining mistakes are mine. If you spot errors or have corrections, please leave a comment below.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Footnotes:

The post How I Beat Lyme Disease with The Ketogenic Diet — Science, How-To Protocols, and 10+ Years of Zero Symptoms appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Dr. Tommy Wood — How to Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia (#851)

2026-01-29 04:16:48

Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Dr. Tommy Wood (@drtommywood), an associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington, where his research focuses on brain health across the lifespan. Alongside his academic work, Tommy is head scientist for Motorsport at Hintsa Performance, overseeing health and performance programs for multiple Formula 1 drivers. He also helped to found the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, is head of research for the dementia prevention charity Food for the Brain, and serves as chief science officer for brain-health coaching company BetterBrain. He is co-host of the Better Brain Fitness podcast and author of the forthcoming book The Stimulated Mind.

Full bio

Products, resources, and people mentioned in the interview

Legal conditions/copyright information

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

Additional podcast platforms

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Tim Ferriss: Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, nice to see you.

Tommy Wood: Nice to see you.

Tim Ferriss: Thanks for making the time.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Tim Ferriss: Absolutely. And as mentioned before we started recording, this is just going to be like our last conversation, because I wanted to reach out to you because cognition, cognition, cognition. Boy, oh, boy, is that on the mind. And pun intended on one level, but we are going to bounce all over the place, and I hope to give people, including myself, a lot of tactical, practical recommendations. Also being clear where the science is solid and where the science is maybe a little thinner ice.

Tommy Wood: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: Right?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Or where something is plausible but not yet proven out. And you’ve got me chewing xylitol gum, you’ve got me looking at air purifiers, but I’m skipping ahead. Let’s go back to the beginning, and I want to give the good old Dr. Chatterjee a nod here because it came up in a conversation you had with him and I was like, “Wow, I never would have thought of that.” Why are human babies so plump? Why are they so fat compared to other species?

Tommy Wood: If you look at human babies compared to pretty much every other mammalian species, we are the only species that’s born fat, even compared to other primates. And it’s thought that the primary reason for this is that that fat is a repository for things that the brain needs in order to develop. And the two that are probably most interesting to you and seem to be particularly important are DHA, the omega-3 fatty acid, and fats as a source of ketones for the brain. When the brain is developing in particular, and I think this is also very relevant to recovery from brain injuries and other states, the preferred synthetic precursor, as in the thing that the brain uses to make structure like fats and cholesterol and that kind of stuff, which makes up a significant chunk of the brain. Ketones are the preferred source, particularly in the developing brain, but I think also later on in various states as an adult.

And so in order to support that very hungry brain, which it is particularly in humans, we’re born fat so that we can generate a bunch of ketones to support that brain developing for the first — you know? Especially for the first few weeks, but maybe even for months after that.

Tim Ferriss: Also, lots of, as I understand it, beautiful bat brown adipose tissue, to keep those little hairless —

Tommy Wood: Keep them warm. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — monkeys warm. Yeah. All right. So we’re going to talk about, because I think the, in a sense, the extremes inform the mean, but not the other way around. So we can talk about certain maybe edge cases, things that people might not view as immediately relevant to themselves.

But since we’re talking about newborns, I’m curious, you’ve looked at therapies, various types of research into brain injury and newborns. What do you do? What can you do? I mean, what’s the state of the art when it comes to treating brain injury in newborns or in infants?

Tommy Wood: There’s two main brain injuries of babies that I study, and they’re probably also the two main brain injuries that are most broadly studied, just because of their impact. And so the first is preterm brain injury. So that’s a baby’s born early, the earlier you’re born, the greater the risk of neurodevelopment of impairment or some other kind of neurological disorder, cerebral palsy, other impairments later in life. And the other is something that we call hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which is essentially you get to normal full term, something happens —

Tim Ferriss: Not enough oxygen? Exactly.

Tommy Wood: Exactly. Not enough blood flow, not enough oxygen gets to the brain. Something happens, usually during childbirth, and people think about the cord is wrapped around the neck or you can get placental abruption, right? The placenta kind of tears off the inside of the uterus or the uterus can completely rupture. But sometimes we don’t know what happened, the baby just comes out and something has happened. In that scenario, the second one, HIE, as we call it, those babies are cooled down. So this is something that I studied a lot in my PhD. You take that baby, and as long as you start within a few hours of birth, you cool them down to 33.5 degrees Celsius for 72 hours. And that significantly reduces death and disability.

Tim Ferriss: That’s 92.3 degrees Fahrenheit for yankees out there.

Tommy Wood: Although even in the US, many of the cooling machines are made in Europe, so they still run on Celsius. So those babies get cooled down, and that’s really the state of the art. Although now we’re starting to figure out that there are still a whole bunch of injuries where that doesn’t help, including preterm babies. So if you’re born preterm, cooling doesn’t help, actually it can be detrimental. And in that scenario, one of the things that they found recently, which is probably most beneficial, is caffeine.

Tim Ferriss: Really?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. Caffeine is not given for neuroprotection. It’s given because babies who are born preterm don’t breathe as well. They have this thing called apnea prematurity. So they don’t have a normal respiratory drive. So you give caffeine to stimulate that, but the trials that used caffeine to treat apnea prematurity, saw significant improvements in cognitive function.

Tim Ferriss: And those were durable improvements, or just during treatment with caffeine?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So when you do these kinds of trials, usually you follow those babies up to something like two or three years old. That’s mainly because an NIH funded trial or an NIH grant lasts five years. So if you’re going to do a full trial in five years, then you can only follow — You have a year or two to enroll and treat, and then you have two or three years to follow them up. And so they see significant improvement at that age, but then also going into childhood, which is ideal. You really want to look out as far as you can. So then there’s now a renewed interest in caffeine and other brain injuries in babies, and that’s something that we’ve tested in my lab. There are some trials now starting in other brain injuries. But beyond that, in both groups, really the biggest impact on later outcomes is the home environment that kid goes back to.

So yes, my colleagues who are practicing neonatologists do a whole bunch of amazing stuff to keep these babies alive and keep their brains in good shape as much as they can when they’re in the intensive care unit, but actually the home environment is where the biggest impact happens, and so then that means that even if you have an imperfect start to life, there’s probably a lot that you can do as a parent, to help that brain to develop and grow as normally as possible.

Tim Ferriss: All right, we’re going to continue to talk about brain injury for a little bit, and then we’re going to talk about a whole lot of multifactorial prisms around cognition and whether or not you can intervene with the fates to preserve or enhance cognition as an adult. So we’re going to get to that. But if we make the hop from infant to adult, right, if you slipped on the ice and hit the back of your head and suffered a severe concussion, what would you personally do after that?

Tommy Wood: There are a few things that I think we can probably do, and we actually wrote a paper about this, came out last year, that covered various nutritional strategies, and most of the strategies would be nutritional supplements that I would probably lean on. And assuming that I didn’t have any control over what happened beforehand, ideally I do lots of things to improve the health of myself, because I think that’s going to affect how my brain and body then respond to the injury. But after that point, then there’s a couple of things that I would do. One, is I would manage fevers. So this goes back to the hypothermia that we talked about in babies. Lots of trials have tried hypothermia for traumatic brain injury in older humans and adults, and they haven’t really shown any benefit. What does seem to be beneficial is preventing hyperthermia.

So if you have significant trauma, one of the things that happens as the immune system gets activated is you get a fever. And that fever increases this gap between the metabolic demand in the brain and the supply of energy, because the mitochondria become damaged during the injury. So if you increase that gap because the higher metabolic rate, because you’re hotter, that seems to make that injury worse. And this has been found in some animal models, but also in some human data. So the most important thing to do is to prevent fevers.

Tim Ferriss: So, get your flu shots, et cetera, other things?

Tommy Wood: Well, so in this scenario, if you need to take Tylenol to prevent a fever —

Tim Ferriss: I see, take acetaminophen.

Tommy Wood: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Right.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, acetaminophen, paracetamol, depending on where you are in the world.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, where you are. Yeah.

Tommy Wood: Maybe even there are some devices where you can do some neck cooling or head cooling. They probably don’t have as much of an effect as some people think they do, but whatever you can do to maintain your body temperature. And so, antipyretics, so things that help prevent fevers, are going to be helpful. I would then also manage blood sugar. The main thing being probably avoiding things that are going to cause large glucose spikes. So avoiding refined carbohydrates, and —

Tim Ferriss: Why does that matter acutely after you whack your head?

Tommy Wood: So you see, again, in multiple studies, and we have to do this experimentally. So some of this comes from animal models, but if you create diabetes or the hyperglycemic during the injury or immediately afterwards, and some of it is driven by the injury, if you have an acute injury, you’re going to get higher blood sugar. So some is cause, some is effect, but it seems that these high glucose spikes are, again, stressful in that setting of an acute brain injury. So just minimizing that as much as possible. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat carbohydrates, but just I would avoid refining carbohydrates. When I worked with athletes at high risk of concussions, if you’re being taken off the field, a low risk thing is just to not chug Powerade as you’re being taken down the tunnel.

Other things that are going to become important with varying degrees of evidence, but still good enough that there’s a high positive asymmetry, right, high possibility of benefit with low risk, creatine supplementation. Creatine is probably more beneficial if you have it on board beforehand, but there’s at least one trial in pediatric TBI that showed creatine enhanced recovery. Omega-3 fatty acids are the same, would certainly include those as well. And then the next thing I would do is I would take exogenous ketones. I have them at home, there are things I’ve played with. I don’t use them regularly, but in this setting, again, I think there’s enough promise to suggest that they’re worth taking. I didn’t include that in this paper because we don’t have good evidence for it, but if I had a brain injury, I would take exogenous ketones.

Tim Ferriss: I would too.

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: I would too.

Tommy Wood: And then there were a few other things that have an increasing amount of evidence for them. So there’s some studies on some B vitamins, particularly riboflavin, branch chain amino acids seem to be beneficial, and that seems to be by improving sleep. Then if you have sleep issues, melatonin has some evidence for it as well. I would avoid caffeine actually in this scenario. There’s a little bit of evidence that says that again, it’s probably due to increasing brain metabolic rate in that sort of early window, similar to high temperature. So I would avoid caffeine particularly early on. And then probably the most important thing that we have evidence for, is early return to physical activity. So low level aerobic exercise, as soon as you can tolerate it at a level that doesn’t make symptoms worse, and then increasing that over time as you get better, that’s going to be an important part of recovery as well.

Tim Ferriss: What’s the supposed mechanism of action with the return to physical exercise and the impact that has on the recovery from, say a concussion?

Tommy Wood: Yeah, there’s probably a few different mechanisms, and to be honest, I don’t think anybody really knows. Again, the evidence is best in pediatric brain injury, particularly pediatric sports related concussions, that’s where they’ve done most of these like randomized controlled trials. But there’s a few things that are going to be happening. You’re going to be improving cerebral blood flow, probably going to get a whole bunch of myokines, exokines that get released during physical activity. We know many of those can have a beneficial effect on the brain. And then you may also see improvements in sleep, right? We know that physical activity helps support sleep. So many of those could be going on at the same time, as long as you’re not doing a level of activity that’s then making symptoms worse.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm, right. So we’re going to take a moment, not for a commercial break, but just for a topical break, to ask a very important question, which is, when you came in second at Washington’s Strongest Man in 2024, and then when you came in the top 20 in the world’s first ever fully off-road Ironman triathlon, what were your weights? What was your body weight in both of those cases?

Tommy Wood: So those two competitions were more than a decade apart, I will say. So in 2012 was when I did the world’s first fully off-road Ironman. It was initially called X-Man, and then Marvel sued the company. So it ended up being called X Tri ’24.

And so when I did that, I think I was probably something like low, 80 kilo, 82, 83 kilos, so like 185 pounds, something like that. And then fast-forward a decade, when I was competing in Washington’s Strongest Man, I was in the middleweight class, and to get into that class, I had to basically diet down and then do a water cut to get under 198 pounds. So I was just under 90 kilos on the day, although normally I’d hang out like 15 pounds higher than that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay, super interesting. We may come back to that. Certainly going to talk about your own personal routines and tricks of the trade that you apply. Before we do that, I want to tie up a couple of loose ends, specifically infant baby, this thing you mentioned, DHA, and why that, and/or omega-3s more broadly speaking are important, right? And I, for instance, I’d say one meal a day is probably right now two cans of sardines, or chub mackerel mixed with some type of oil, like olive oil or MCT oil, with a splash of apple cider vinegar. It’s shockingly good, it sounds like cat food. It’s actually better than it sounds, with some salt. But could you explain why this DHA, et cetera, is important? You also mentioned the omega-3 in the context of recovery from brain injury. So why is it important and what is the prescription, so to speak? How can people translate that into something they actually do?

Tommy Wood: When you think about, again, sort of the structure of the brain, and you’re trying to develop the brain in the first place, then —

Tim Ferriss: Big pile of fat.

Tommy Wood: Big pile of fat. And a lot of that fat is DHA. And actually brain, if you don’t mind eating brain, brain is a great source of omega-3s.

Tim Ferriss: I tried it, I tried cheap brain in Turkey. I’m going to tell you, the presentation could have used some work. It was just like straight out of the formaldehyde jar plopped onto a plate. It was a bit much for me, to be honest, but, yeah.

Tommy Wood: You can fancy it up if you want, but equally, brain consumption is not required. So DHA tends to concentrate at the synapses of neurons. It seems to be really important for helping to regulate the release of neurotransmitters, like being part of the structural component of those synapses. It also tends to accumulate in mitochondria, and the DHA content of mitochondria is positively correlated with their capacity for energy production. Some of it could be due to some weird physical, as in physics properties of DHA, like how electrons move through it differently from other fats.

But anyway, it seems that particularly for mitochondrial function as well as synapsic function, DHA is critical, and so it sort of preferentially accumulates in those areas. Very important during brain development, so much so that the mother will sacrifice her own DHA stores so that the baby gets enough if she’s sort of borderline in terms of DHA levels. And it’s also why women in general tend to be better at converting shorter chain omega-3 fatty acids like ALA to DHA and EPA. It’s thought that that’s because that’s going to be needed for a baby one day, more so than in men.

Tim Ferriss: So eat brains or find someone you can breastfeed on. Am I hearing this correctly?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: I’m just kidding.

Tommy Wood: Are those the only two options? I’m not sure.

Tim Ferriss: I’m kidding. Oh, wait, I forgot about the fish. I forgot about the fish, yeah.

Tommy Wood: Or you could eat some fish. Optional third. Then we also know that DHA in particular, but also EPA, these are both the long chain omega-3 fast acids, they’re important precursors for various signaling molecules that are important as it pertains to brain function, but also recovery from brain injury. So —

Tim Ferriss: What is an example of a signaling molecule?

Tommy Wood: Yeah, so actually a lot of the various molecules that have various functions in our body activating receptors, turning genes on and off, are derived from different fats. And so in this setting, the ones I’m thinking about, are called like resolvins, maresins, protectins, that are derived from these unsaturated fatty acids. And so neuroprotect in D1 is one that people are very interested in, it’s being tested as, you know, you give it exogenously after different brain injuries. We’re not at a point where I would recommend that people take it, but that’s something that’s being studied right now. And neuroprotection D1 is derived from DHA. In the setting of brain injury, these resolvins and protectins seem to be really important for regulating the immune response, in particular switching off the immune response. The immune response is important, but we also need to be able to switch it off.

And that’s probably part of the role that they’re playing. When you look at long-term omega-3 supplementation, there was a study that was done in football players, where they randomized them to different levels of DHA across the season, and they found that those taking one to two grams of DHA a day saw less of an accumulation of a marker of brain injury in the blood, called neurofilament light, across the season. The thought being that all these small sort of subconcussive impacts that the kids experience on the field is generating this sort of low level of injury that accumulates across the season, and omega-3s or DHA seem to protect against that. So all of those to say that if you want to maintain brain function, and we see if you’re omega-3 deficient, you’re at higher risk of dementia, cognitive decline, that’s dependent on other things like methylation status, but it’s going to be an important component of maintaining brain structure and function.

So I think that kind of level, one to two grams a day on average, at least this is going to — you know? If you get two or three good servings of seafood a week or a reasonable supplement, that’s going to be probably enough to consistently hit those levels.

The other part of it is that your body will actively sequester extra up to a point. So when people are talking about different forms of DHA, like should you take your omega-3s as a phospholipid form or a triglyceride form. And the triglyceride form is more common in seafood. The studies that look at these over long periods of time, what happens is if you consume a lot of the triglyceride form from seafood, your adipose tissue is used as a storage place. So it cycles through the adipose and then it gets released and the brain can use it afterwards. So that probably requires you to spend periods of time where you’re accessing your adipose tissue, right? You’re not constantly eating. So exercise or periods of fasting may help you access that depot, but that depot allows us to then use these other forms of DHA that can sort of accumulate on our bodies over time and then we use them as we need them.

Tim Ferriss: All right. I’m wondering if there’s anything else, and it may end up circling back around as well, but is there anything else related to omega-3 specifically that you’d like to comment on? And I could be hallucinating here, it’s not just AI that does it, but omega-3, does that have — oh, no, it was B complex, which you’d brought up before perhaps. Or maybe there is an interaction with omega-3 and homocysteine.

Tommy Wood: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: I’m trying to figure out where homocysteine fits into the picture with respect to cognitive health.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So there absolutely seems to be this interaction between omega-3 status and B vitamin status, particularly the B vitamins that are involved in methylation, so they affect the level of something called homocysteine. And this is something you can get a blood test for. And those who have inadequate B vitamin status or inadequate methylation status, have an elevation of homocysteine. There have been multiple trials that happened two or three decades ago, maybe even in the last decade, where people thought, “Oh, omega-3s are going to be the answer to dementia prevention, or B vitamins and homocystine are going to be the answer to dementia prevention,” and then they would give people B vitamins or omega-3s and then they didn’t see much of an effect.

What we found out later, I mean, the scientific we, was that both are required in order to see benefit. So this was probably first seen in the VITACOG trial, which was run by David Smith at Oxford, and they found in individuals with elevated homocysteine, so that was a level above 13, giving B vitamins to reduce homocysteine significantly improved rate of brain atrophy and cognitive function, only in those who had an adequate omega-3 status.

And the same thing was seen in the B-Proof trial subsequently, and then the opposite, which was seen in the omegaAD trial where they gave omega-3 fatty acids, but they found they only saw benefit in individuals who had a low enough homocysteine. It’s thought to be because if you want DHA to be in a membrane in a cell in your brain, it needs to be attached to some kind of phospholipid, right? Fats don’t just float around, they’re part of these phospholipids that sit inside the cell membrane. And that requires it to be attached to a head group, these head groups are usually derived from choline or an ethanolamine, although those can be converted from one to the other. And in order to do all of that kind of biochemical attaching and placement, requires methylation. It’s very methylation dependent. So it’s thought that in order for DHA to do its job, you need adequate methylation status so that all those processes can run. And if you only have one or the other, then you won’t see benefit.

Tim Ferriss: Got it. Yet another reminder for long-term listeners, this will come as no surprise, but you’ve got to get blood tests, comprehensive blood tests, and really track this stuff with trend lines over time. But that’s a much longer conversation, but suffice to say, you need the orchestra, right? Or you need multiple legs of the stool.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: It’s not just one leg of the stool.

Tommy Wood: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So let’s maybe return to, I’m going to use a term that’s a little dangerous to throw around, but kind of first principles or fundamentals maybe is a better way to phrase it. I’m terrified as many people are of this thing called Alzheimer’s disease. And you could throw in dementia, cognitive decline in general, right? And conversely, very interested in extending health span. I’m not totally convinced that we’re going to get to 150 years, 200 years —

Tommy Wood: Yeah, me neither.

Tim Ferriss: — like all the tech billionaires might want to have us believe, but it does seem, certainly if I look at my own health span, kind of local maximum right now for myself, there’s just capacity right now compared to prior generations, I feel very good about it. So I feel like I can extend that runway. And cognition for me is just one of the most, maybe the most important pillars of that. Because having seen multiple people disintegrate cognitively, they don’t just lose their ability to remember. They basically lose their identity, right? They lose their ability to emote. It’s a loss of the self. I mean, it’s a death before death almost in a way. So really would love to do anything possible with the right risk benefit ratio, to avoid it. But fundamentals. Should we talk about, I’m going to fuck this up, Auguste Deter, Auguste Deter? Deter? How do you say this name?

Tommy Wood: Auguste Deter, I think.

Tim Ferriss: There we go. Yeah. All right. Who is this person? Because I’m guessing most folks will not recognize the name. Certainly I didn’t recognize the name. Hadn’t seen it until I got a couple of notes from you, prior to hopping on.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, so Auguste Deter, or if you read some of the original papers, Auguste D, was Alzheimer’s index patient. So Alois Alzheimer, that Alzheimer’s disease is named after, was a psychiatrist in the early 20th century, and he took a particular interest in individuals who had sort of rare or unusual cases of presenile dementia. So what now most of us call Alzheimer’s disease, which is sort of a late onset dementia or what was called a senile dementia, which just meant that it occurred after 65 years old, that was not what Alzheimer studied. He studied unusual dementias where people who were quite young in their 40s or 50s experienced significant cognitive decline and dementia, and Auguste Deter was one of them. He then, after studying them as a psychiatrist or working with them as a psychiatrist, after they died, he then looked at their brains under a microscope.

So he was the first person to see amyloid plaques, tau tangles, that are now sort of pathognomonic. They’re like what we consider to be required as part of Alzheimer’s disease. But it’s just interesting that what we have now is not what he studied. So over time, people thought that the brains of individuals who had this sort of early onset Alzheimer’s or these early onset dementias that Alzheimer’s studied, and those who have these late onset dementia that we now call Alzheimer’s disease, those brains looked very similar under a microscope, so they were kind of lumped together. Although we do still have two kind of broad forms. The early onset Alzheimer’s, which is usually a single genetic mutation in something like a precinct gene or the amyloid precursor protein gene, that then creates a picture that’s much more like what Alzheimer’s studied, or the late onset Alzheimer’s, which is what most people think about when they think about Alzheimer’s disease is probably somewhere between 95 and 99 percent of cases of Alzheimer’s.

And there is a genetic component to risk, but it seems to be much more tightly tied to lifestyle and the environment and other lifestyle factors that we have some control over, hopefully. And the reason why Auguste Deter is interesting to me is because I don’t think she actually had Alzheimer’s disease as we would now think of it. So there have been groups that have taken sections of her brain from Alzheimer’s old collections, and they’ve done genetic studies, and she didn’t seem to have any of the genes that cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease, or any of the mutations that cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She wasn’t an APOE4 carrier. I think she was 3-3, if I remember correctly. So she didn’t have any of the genetic risk factors. And so what caused this and caused this so young, I think she was in her 50s, is still actually unknown.

There have been some recent retellings of the story. Some people think that she may have had neurosyphilis, and neurosyphilis actually causes amyloid accumulation, it looks very similar to Alzheimer’s disease.

Tim Ferriss: Neurosyphilis, meaning she had syphilis and she just —

Tommy Wood: It got into her brain.

Tim Ferriss: Got it, mm-hmm.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. And that can look very similar under a microscope, especially 100 years ago or more than a hundred years ago when we just sort of first starting to look at brains under microscopes. And then others suggested that it could have been more psychiatric. Nutrient deficiencies, certainly very common, could have been just like the other components of her environment. She was by all accounts like a downtrodden housewife that maybe didn’t get much engagement or stimulation or wasn’t particularly well treated at home, and that could have sort of precipitated it. And we don’t actually know, but many of these things, it just seems interesting that it’s probably quite likely she didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease at all.

Tim Ferriss: Wild. All right. So I’m going to take this in a few different directions, and as per usual, turn it around to be self-serving for yours truly. But I’m going through some of the notes that I had for our conversation and I’m sure I will have mentioned this in the bio and intro at the very top of this show, but I have this bullet in front of me and I just want to make sure this is something you feel is defensible. 45 to 70 percent of dementia is preventable through lifestyle. Is that a defensible statement?

Tommy Wood: Yes. As far as we think it can be defensible.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m not trying to put you in the hot seat. I’m just saying, I don’t know where that number comes from.

Tommy Wood: So I can tell you where that number comes from.

Tim Ferriss: That sounds great, right? That seems like a ray of sunshine and a pretty gloomy possible conversation where people think you’re just like, “Okay, there’s genetic determinism. You got this thing and you’re screwed. If you have a bunch of it in your family, you’re also screwed, et cetera.” But it seems like there’s a lot you can do to right the ship for a period of time. Okay. So where does 45 to 70 percent of dementia is preventable from lifestyle? Where does that number range come from?

Tommy Wood: So 45 percent comes from the most recent edition of the Lancet Commission Report on Dementia Prevention, which is overseen by Professor Gill Livingston and brings together all these different experts in dementia and its risk factors. And they sort of scour the research for observational studies and then as much as possible, interventional studies. So a lot of it is epidemiological data. Looking at different risk factors that have a consistent relationship with dementia risk. And then, you do these sort of statistical calculations to look at something called population attributable risk.

Which is essentially saying, if I eliminated this risk factor entirely from the population, what percentage of dementias would I expect to no longer happen? That’s essentially what it means. And all of these different percentages add up to 45 percent. So it’s a couple of percent for smoking, it’s 7 percent for a low level of earlier education. It’s like a percent for alcohol. Then there’s hypertension, hearing loss — or sorry, high blood pressure. Hypertension is the fancy medical word. High blood pressure, hearing loss, obesity, low physical activity.

And all these different percentages add up to 45 percent. There are some things that were on that list or that aren’t on that list that I think should potentially be included. So like sleep loss or poor sleep and insomnia is not included. Late life physical activity was discussed in the report but was not included even though there seems to be some good evidence there. So actually that suggests that there may be more than 45 percent that are preventable. And there are other studies, like there was one big study done from the UK Biobank data by Professor Jin-Tai Yu that estimated that up to 72 percent of dementias were preventable.

If this was going to happen, this would require a complete societal overhaul because a lot of this risk comes from low socioeconomic status, low educational and work opportunities, like all these other things that are kind of baked into societal risk for dementia. But others are things that we have more control over, like level of physical activity, whether we smoke, whether we drink. So some is directly under our control. That’s probably something like 15 to 20 percent, maybe more.

And some is kind of driven by these maybe bigger kind of societal risk factors. But if you did all of that and we managed to completely change how everybody lives and all of these risk factors, the idea is that maybe even up to three quarters of dementia cases could be entirely prevented. Now, that’s very different from saying that I could guarantee that you will not get dementia, right?

That’s not the same thing. We’re talking about this stuff at the population level. And I have to say this because if I talk about physical activity or sleep or nutrition, and these are really important for dementia risk, somebody will always say, “Well, my family member did all that stuff and they still got dementia.” And so we’re talking about probabilities. We’re not talking about, I can definitely guarantee that somebody will avoid dementia, but I think we can definitely say you can stack the deck massively in your favor through a whole variety of actions that should decrease risk long term.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So part of the reason that I make this very self-interested is because I’m self-interested. The other part is that I think the personal is very easy for people to concretize for themselves so they can interrogate how they’re behaving, what they might do differently, what they might add, what they might subtract. So let me tell you some of what I am observing and then some of what I’m doing. And I would love for you to identify or maybe speak to things that are low hanging fruit or like reasonably accessible that are missing, right?

All right. So a few things. Lots of folks in my family currently who I’m caring for in one way or another deteriorating very quickly with what has been called Alzheimer’s — again, kind of a tricky diagnosis, not sure how much they’re actually looking at, whether it’s beta amyloid, tau or anything else, but certainly in some cases, these blood relatives are APOE33. So I’m like, “Huh.” It also raises the question of, is there an undiagnosed infection? Maybe it’s an STI. Who knows? I don’t know what the answer is to that.

I mean, it’s kind of another line of testing perhaps. And so, I’ve been trying to do a few things for myself, recognizing that if someone starts to really show obvious symptoms that can’t be easily explained away in their 70s, let’s just say, the process probably started, what, decades earlier? I mean, things have started, like the cars have started to pile up, the machinery has started to break a lot sooner. So it would seem like the earlier you intervene with better lifestyle changes, et cetera, the better off you’ll be.

So I’ve got the fasting and the ketogenic diet and all of that stuff, which I do regularly. They’ve got the exogenous ketones, which like you, I use sparingly. I don’t use them all the time because particularly like before this conversation, I took 11 milliliters of a ketone monoester. But I think once all is said and done, it’s basically 51 percent, 1,3-Butanediol. And I have some concerns around 1,3-Butanediol specifically in chronic use or at sufficiently high doses, say 30 plus per day.

So I tend to use it for special occasions like this, toast, have a glass of champagne, have some exogenous ketones and off to the races. All right. So there’s the ketone piece, which I think is non-trivial. There’s the — I would say for the most part, avoiding crazy glucose spikes all the time. Occasionally I’ll have Christmas, sure, had a bunch of cookies. Who cares? It’s Christmas. It’s fine. Had a bunch of pie. But I have a CGM on right now. I had a continuous ketone monitor on at the same time for about 28 days.

I’m really interested to look at all of that, but I’m generally following like a slow carb diet or Mediterranean style diet. I am getting enough omega-3. I know that because of fish intake and also when needed supplemental intake. I do seem to be a poor methylator. So I’m taking B vitamins, L-methylfolate, all of that stuff. Tracking blood once a quarter. So I’ve got super comprehensive stuff on that side. Zone three training, I do find it as boring as watching paint dry. Even when I’m listening to a podcast or watching a Netflix mini-series or something.

But probably doing two to three sessions a week, let’s call it 30 to 60 minutes, walking every day, lots of walking and we’ll come back to that because actually, I can’t resist. We probably will come back to it, but walking 4,000 plus steps a day reduces dementia risk 25 percent optimal, 10,000 steps daily, and then reverses hippocampal shrinkage, two percent increase versus expected one to two percent decrease. That’s the bullet that I highlighted. And then, weight training a couple of times a week. I could keep going. I’m not going to bore people to death with this Dr. Evil life story.

But I will say that I’ve also wanted to get a snapshot of what things look like. So I’m going to be having a call. I won’t mention the company by name because I haven’t done all of my due diligence. They have some scientific advisors who I think are very credible, but have done brain MRI. I’ve done the blood draws, the DNA tests, everything else, because I’m APOE34. And looking at the brain MRI, I mean, I’m a muggle, right? So I probably shouldn’t be allowed to sort of grab the wheel when driving on the MRI reading.

But I wanted to look at the data. It seems like, and who knows how defensible this is, but my MRI predicted brain age based on hippocampal volume, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is 46 instead of 48. So I wasn’t thrilled about that. I’m like, “Well, all right, not sure what else I can do. Maybe a flood dose of ibogaine.” That’s pretty interesting data around that from Nolan Williams, but not something I would recommend to most people, including myself. So there’s that. Did a whole battery of cognitive testing through this startup.

Now that came in at brain age of 20 years predicted, 28 years younger than your chronological age, but you can kind of beat the test. There’s some gamification, so I don’t know how heavily to weigh this, right? So brain age of 20 years, man, sounds great. There are certain aspects that are harder to game, like reaction time testing. Okay. So I had like 267 milliseconds basically versus 406 milliseconds. Okay, great. There could be some training effect, like learned training effect, but then there’s like number span, focus.

I won’t bore everybody with that, but word pairs, names, and face pairing. With mnemonic devices, if you train yourself, you can really sort of game the test. And TBD on like proteomics, I’m getting all sorts of stuff drawn to try to get an accurate baseline of where I stand now so that I can measure all of the effect hopefully of these interventions over time.

What would you say are like, there are 20 things I could mention, but like here are three or four that I would also pay attention to.

Tommy Wood: So first, a couple of comments on all the stuff that you mentioned about what you’re currently doing. I’ve already mentioned that I think that there’s a lot of promise for ketones. I’m not sure that ketones necessarily have to have a place in prevention and I’m not sure that you would necessarily need them from a prevention standpoint. There are some reasonably good data. So like the medium change regulatory work from Stephen Cunnane’s lab, is quite compelling in the Alzheimer’s disease taking MCT oil seems to increase acetoacetate uptake into the brain.

This is associated with improvements in cognitive function and this is overcoming what looks like an energetic deficit in individuals who have Alzheimer’s disease. And this is something that, again, is one of those things that are pathognomonic. We think that we see this and this is kind of like part of the picture of Alzheimer’s. We see that like this is Alzheimer’s.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Can I pause for one second?

Tommy Wood: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Real quick, don’t lose where you are. We’re talking about MCT oil. Number one, if people want to play with MCT oil, be close to a bathroom when you start. And if you combine it with double espresso and creatine, definitely have some depends around. The second is the ketogenic diet for me, just to briefly provide a little more context, is also for its, I think, plausible anti-cancer effects and just kind of all cause mortality plus mental acuity. I just think a lot faster when I have more metabolic flexibility with something like intermittent fasting.

That’s another thing I do a lot of, where my body has just got the machinery to produce ketones. But yes, I hear you. Okay. MCTs.

Tommy Wood: So the thought being here, right, there’s a difference between what you find works really well for you versus what the listener thinks they should have to implement for themselves. And so, I’m now going down the road of why I don’t think we all need to be in ketosis to prevent dementia. So I think from a therapeutic standpoint, it seems to be beneficial overcoming this energetic deficit that we see in Alzheimer’s disease, particularly early Alzheimer’s disease, or maybe it’s easier to overcome earlier on.

And one of the ways we look at this is with something called a PET scan, right? So you do an FTG PET, you give a labeled glucose molecule, you inject that, you see how much gets into the brain in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, less glucose is getting into the brain. Now, we’ve traditionally come at it from the point of that glucose can’t get in, right? There’s some kind of metabolic disease, instant resistance. This is where the idea of type three diabetes has come from, insulin resistance in the brain, that glucose isn’t getting in.

But a PET scan cannot differentiate between the glucose can’t get in versus the brain isn’t asking for that glucose in the first place. And there are actually some very nice studies that looked at brain activation and glucose uptake in response to cognitive stimulus in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. And what they see is that yes, at baseline, there’s less glucose being taken up into the brain of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, but if you stimulate that brain cognitively, it can take up glucose just fine so that you get into the range of a normal healthy brain in early Alzheimer’s disease.

Once you get to like advanced stage dementia, it’s too late. But at that early stage, I think part of the reason why we’re seeing less glucose uptake is because those parts of the brain are less active because we’re just not using them as much. And just like glucose uptake into the muscles, which is demand driven, right? You work your muscles, they ask for more glucose, they take more up. The brain seems to be the same, at least early on. So I think we think a lot about the supply side, the energetic supply side, but I don’t think we think enough about the demand side.

How do we create energetic demand in the brain such that we are maintaining glucose uptake, maintaining energetic state, and then doing that also maintains all the metabolic machinery that you really care about in terms of long-term function.

Tim Ferriss: Can I just muggle translate for a second?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So if I’m hearing you correctly, this is something I’ve chatted with Dominic D’Agostino about, but I’m wearing this CGM, right? So I’ve got this device on my arm that tells me what my glucose levels are at any given point in time with whatever, three minute sampling or something like that. You’ve got to calibrate that with a fingerprint, by the way, folks. But if I eat a meal and then I don’t go for a walk, my glucose spikes and I might conclude, “Wow, my muscles are really not accepting glucose.”

My muscles are bad at accepting glucose, but that’s not actually true in my case, right? If I go for a walk or I do some light exercise, I guess it’s like GLUT4 transporters or whatever, get all jazzed up and help that glucose to be better disposed into muscle tissue, right? And like you said, in the case of the brain and people referring to Alzheimer’s as type three diabetes, it’s like, “Wow, the brain can’t use glucose,” or it’s very bad at using glucose. But if I’m hearing you correctly, the additional question that they should be asking is, is it just that or is the brain not asking for glucose, right? The equivalent of the GLUT4 transporters, right?

Tommy Wood: Yep.

Tim Ferriss: Is the brain basically offline? It’s a car up on blocks, but if you take it down, yeah, it’s going to use gasoline just fine. So if that’s the case, I guess it’s just a call to action for more stimulation of the brain. And when I was first just coming across your notes that you sent prior to this conversation, I went on ChatGPT and I was like, “What are the most glucose intensive activities for the brain?” And they gave me a bunch of mental exercises, which isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I could have prompted it better.

And it said, “But even still, the sort of improvement or increase might be plus, less than 10 percent in terms of the total.” And then I was like, “Well, are there other activities such as physical activities that might increase glucose uptake in the brain?” And it gave me a whole list, but rather than regurgitate that, are all types of stimulation created equal or are there some sort of 80/20 analysis like, okay, there are some tools that are better for the job.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So when looking at this purely in relation to glucose uptake, those data don’t exist, right? So I’m going to have to extrapolate further than that. And I think that’s important because a decrease in glucose uptake is just a signal that that area of the brain isn’t as metabolically active, which means we’re not just not using it as much at the simplest level. So then if you think about various activities that we could use to stimulate the brain, which do seem to be protective in various different ways, both they can enhance cognitive function in the short term.

And then protective against dementia in the long term. Actually, this ties very nicely into the comment that I was going to make about your physical activity routine, because this is where I think some things could be layered on.

When you look at the different physical activities or exercise and how they affect the brain, different types of exercise affect the brain differently. So you certainly need a smorgasbord of all of them to kind of get a global support for the brain. But something that seems to be particularly beneficial is coordinates of exercise or open skill exercise, plus or minus things that have a navigational component.

And these are essentially sports or activities where you’re constantly having to respond to the environment and adapt. That’s what makes them open skill rather than closed skill or unimodal exercise like going for a jog or sitting on a bike or something like that. So when they compare sports or activities that have the same amount of physical challenge, but a different amounts of cognitive challenge because of the open skill nature, you see greater benefits in terms of brain structure, improvements in cognitive function.

Tim Ferriss: And open skill just means high level of unanticipated variety or variety. What is it?

Tommy Wood: So both. So it basically has a greater amount of complex motor skill required. Some of it can be learned. So dancing is one example, right? So because you learn the steps of a dance, but some —

Tim Ferriss: Single strongest activity for dementia prevention. Am I overstepping there?

Tommy Wood: Yeah, probably. So if you look at physical activity and the effect that it has on cognitive function and also —

Tim Ferriss: Or one of mental health.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, but in terms of both mental health, so studies in depression, as well as studies looking at different activities that people do and the risk of dementia, their risk of dementia, and studies where they randomize people to different types of activity, including dance, dance seems to have the highest sort of effect size compared to other types of physical activity. But there’s multiple components to dance, right? So you have to learn the steps, but there’s also a social component, there’s a music component, right?

All these things are probably part of the magic source together, but open skill sports also include board sports or ball sports or team sports where you’re having to react to the environment and other people around you.

Tim Ferriss: Do you say bull sports like rodeo? What are we talking?

Tommy Wood: No. Ball.

Tim Ferriss: Ball. B-A-L-L.

Tommy Wood: B-A-L-L.

Tim Ferriss: Awesome. It’s not going to be good for the TBI to get people on top of bulls, but okay, got you.

Tommy Wood: I think bull sports would probably be good if you could avoid the TBI, actually probably right up there. Similarly, martial art is also good as long as you don’t get punched in the head a bunch or kicked in the head a bunch —

Tim Ferriss: Or choked out too much.

Tommy Wood: Or choked out too much. So these — beyond the physical strain that these exercises have, they seem to have an additional aspect of requiring reaction speed, challenging processing speed, learned complex motor skills, those — they seem to have an outsized effect in terms of cognitive function. Something else, just to — this is kind of an aside, but just based on the physical activity component, when you’re looking at more aerobic or even like closed skill, unimodal, running, cycling kind of sports.

The benefit seems to be intensity dependent. So yes, if you’re not doing anything, then going for a walk and walking a certain number of steps a day is going to be great, beneficial, decreased dementia risk, absolutely. But looking at hippocampal structure and function, for instance, which you mentioned, right? You’re talking about measuring your hippocampus on an MRI scan. Higher intensity activities seem to be better.

So probably the longest study where they ever did something like this, they had people, this was an Australian study where they had people do the Norwegian 4×4 protocol, three times a week for several months.

Tim Ferriss: My God.

Tommy Wood: And so for anybody who doesn’t know what this involves, it’s four sets of four minutes on a treadmill at 85 to 95 percent of your maximum heart rate with four minutes rest, you do that four times. It is miserable.

Tim Ferriss: I mean, that’s like, pretend like you’re being chased by wolves through the snow for four minutes. And then take a four minute rest and then do that. Yeah.

Tommy Wood: Four times.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay. Right.

Tommy Wood: But they saw significant improvements in hippocampal structure and function that were maintained for several years after the end of the trial.

Tim Ferriss: Several years.

Tommy Wood: Several years after trial.

Tim Ferriss: So a few months and then sustained for several years.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. I think they followed them up for five years after the end of the trial.

Tim Ferriss: That makes it much more interesting.

Tommy Wood: I think a lot of this is driven by lactate. So when we talk about the various things that support the brain through exercise, we often talk about BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which has increased with exercise. But the BDNF that you can measure in the blood, that’s produced by the muscles during exercise doesn’t really get into the brain very readily. Most of the BDNF we have in the brain is produced locally and it’s actually driven by things like lactate. So lactate does get into the brain.

The more lactate you have in the blood, the more it gets into the brain. And then that acts as a histone deacetylase inhibitor that activates the blood and the BDNF ketones do the same thing. Osteocalcin, which is released when we sort of load the bones structurally, it’s released from bones, seems to do something similar. So generating lactate seems to be beneficial — probably because one of the things it’s doing is it’s generating more BDNF that then is associated with improvements in hippocampal structure and function.

So as long as you’re doing sports that have some high degree of intensity, so you’re regularly producing lactate and then, either in the same sport or separately doing these sort of high skill, high reaction time, open skill kind of sports, that’s probably going to be beneficial from an exercise standpoint.

Tim Ferriss: I’m still completely stuck on the three times a week, basically VO2 max training, right?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: For a few months. Is a few months like three or four months, or how many months was it?

Tommy Wood: The study was either six or 12 months. I can’t remember the intervention period. It was one or the other.

Tim Ferriss: And with durable effects over a follow-up period of five years.

Tommy Wood: Five years.

Tim Ferriss: Something like that.

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: That is a great investment. That makes it a much more compelling sales pitch for me. And like I’ve done plenty of VO2 max training in the past, but it’s not necessarily fun, right?

Tommy Wood: No.

Tim Ferriss: I mean, I will say, if you can, again, avoid getting your arms snapped, exhibit A right here with my elbow surgery, but if you can avoid the breaking limbs and getting choked out too frequently, something like jiu-jitsu is actually fantastic because you might have three to five minute rounds and then, you take a break for a round and then you go back in and chances are, depending on who you’re rolling with, it’s going to be pretty intense. Obviously, it depends on how competitive the gym is, but the durability is just remarkable. That is really, really, really, really interesting.

Now, is the threshold for sufficient intensity, I imagine it varies tremendously from person to person, depending on lactate threshold, right?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But like for you, do you need to do something approaching the Norwegian 4×4 to cross the threshold sufficiently in your mind or does something less suffice?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. The problem with having just one — I mean, it’s one very good study, but just having one study on this is that we get really focused on the protocol, but I think that anything that is regularly producing, you’re getting above your lactate threshold, you’re generating significant — several millimoles of lactate. I don’t think people need to measure it, but if you’re getting six, seven plus, something like that, you’re definitely going to be in that range.

Tim Ferriss: Is there something, like people use a talk test, for instance, Peter Attia talks about this for zone two training, where you can kind of have a conversation and be labored short sentences, but you don’t really feel like it, as an indicator that you may be roughly sort of in zone two. Is there an equivalent for that range of lactate?

Tommy Wood: Not that I know of.

Tim Ferriss: 10 percent from puking into a bucket.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, it’s definitely going to be like misery related. So if I think about a lot of the training that I did as a student, I was a rower. And this is something that —

Tim Ferriss: Brutal. You love misery.

Tommy Wood: Actually, I don’t love misery enough, which is why probably I wasn’t as good a rower as I could have been. But there are lots of protocols where you’re doing relatively short sprints with relatively long rest periods that still generate large amounts of lactate. And so in studies where they’ve done this, you’re talking about 30 seconds flat out on a bike or a rowing machine with several minutes of rest times six, eight, 10 rounds. By the end, you can generate a lot of lactate without having to do something continuously for several minutes at a time.

I was just reading that one of the favorite training protocols for one of the world champion rowers was 45 seconds, flat out, completely flat out on the rowing machine, within six minutes of recovery, but doing that several times. And then at the end, you’re generating several millimolar of lactate. So I think anything like that, that’s going to get you in that zone, it just requires maximum effort for even just like 20 to 40 something seconds, even with several minutes break in between, you’re going to be hitting that.

Tim Ferriss: So I imagine the gold standard, do you have some guy in a lab coat with a clipboard who pricks your finger or something and does these blood draws to determine the millimolar concentration of lactate? Is there a breathable option as there is with ketones, right? Where you can measure acetone through something that looks like a breathalyzer as opposed to a finger prick for BHB? Does anything like that exist and make it a little —

Tommy Wood: No, they’re working on continuous lactate monitors just like you would have — and some people do sort of have those, because they’re right near being commercially available. So some people do have access to those already. But equally, I would argue that it doesn’t matter that much. Just like go and do something really, really hard for a short period of time and do that a few times over and do that relatively regularly. That’s probably enough majoring in the minors that you need to do to get that benefit.

Tim Ferriss: Sounds like my sled assignment. I do love my sled pushing and pulling. You can definitely wipe yourself out with that stuff.

Tommy Wood: Okay. All right.

Tim Ferriss: Without necessarily the impact of me trying to run from wolves on a treadmill or something. Okay. So I do want to take a brief commercial break, but it’s not for any sponsor. It’s just to mention that, and then we’re going to kind of dive straight back into the programming and discussion. But you have a book that is coming out shortly called The Stimulated Mind. It goes through all the stuff we’re talking about and a lot more. People should pick it up, that’s Dr. Tommy Wood, obviously, but The Stimulated Mind. There’s so much horseshit and charlatanism floating around out there in the world of anything related to cognition and memory. It’s part of the reason — segue is a little awkward, but I was like, that’s part of the reason I wanted to have you on is not to highlight necessarily that, but the antithesis of it, which is someone with real clinical expertise, research credentials, who is also a practitioner. It’s like you walk the walk.

And I wanted to ask you, you mentioned supplements earlier, and of course everybody loves to hear about supplements. But what are some that may not be on the usual list of suspects, so to speak? One, I would love to hear you speak to is CDP choline. People might not think of xylitol as a supplement, but certainly you could argue that maybe there’s a place for it. Do you want to add anything to that and just expand on those?

Tommy Wood: Sure. I can expand on those. I think that the supplements that we have the best evidence for they start with those core nutrients that we could get from the diet, but if we don’t, then we definitely should supplement. So we’ve mentioned omega-3s, B vitamins, especially those involved in methylation. So that’s vitamin B12, folate, which is B9, riboflavin, which is B2 and then B6. Vitamin D, obviously critical. Iron supplementation, particularly if people are anemic. So that requires a whole assessment for why are you anemic in the first place, but often particularly more common in women. And many of the symptoms that women may experience around perimenopause are associated with inadequate iron status. So getting your iron status checked and addressed is really important. Magnesium, certainly critical as well.

If we’re thinking about other things that do seem to have both an acute and long-term benefit in terms of cognitive function, then all the kind of antioxidant polyphenols are very interesting, particularly those that come from berries, but related ones in coffee, tea, on the skins of roasted nuts and seeds, they have similar effects. And so you mentioned choline, and right at the beginning when we were talking about omega-3s, I think choline is critical because of its importance as a head group for fats to be attached to in membranes. That’s maybe one of the reasons why it’s important for the brain. And various estimates suggest that we’re becoming increasingly choline deficient as we stop eating things like eggs and liver, which are our richest sources of dietary choline. But there are randomized controlled trials in two different settings that we’ve talked about already. So one in older adults already experiencing some degree of cognitive decline where supplementing with CDP choline, which is also called citicoline, seems to improve certain aspects of cognitive function.

And then again, after traumatic brain injury, there are meta analyses that show that supplementing with CDP choline can improve some neuropsychological outcomes, in particular after TBI. So I think most of us can probably get choline from the diet. But in some of these cognitively degraded states, we might call them something like 500 to 1,000 milligrams a day of choline seems to be beneficial.

Tim Ferriss: Do you take it or do you just get it from eggs and salt?

Tommy Wood: I get it from eggs and liver. And some seafood, sardines have some choline in. As do some whole grains, like oats have some, quinoa has some, so all of it kind of adds up.

So I don’t supplement the choline. I do supplement with creatine. I don’t have the perfect trial that creatine is going to prevent dementia, but I think we’ve seen enough interesting data across depression. Again, sleep deprivation —

Tim Ferriss: Sleep deprivation. How many grams do you take daily? What’s your standard daily dose?

Tommy Wood: I take 10 grams every day.

Tim Ferriss: Single dose or divided, doesn’t matter?

Tommy Wood: So I take it all in one go in the morning. There’s some evidence that suggests that once you get above five grams, you probably start to saturate creatine uptake transporters, so maybe you don’t take all of it up. But the reason why I take it all in one go is because I remember to take all of it in one go. Another reason is that I find creatine to be quite cognitively stimulating for me. So you took your ketones. I took my creatine before I got on this call.

Tim Ferriss: I took five grams of creatine too.

Tommy Wood: And so if I take creatine later in the day, I don’t sleep as well. It’s very noticeable for me, but that’s not the case for everybody. Some people take creatine and they don’t notice the cognitive effect. It doesn’t affect their sleep, so it’s very different from person to person. And so those are the reasons why I just take it all in one go in the morning. But especially if you’re going to take over 10 grams, 20, 30 grams, you’re probably best splitting it up into several doses so that you absorb more of it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Or 30 grams at one go also is tempting the gods to smite you with a really, really bad bathroom situation.

Tommy Wood: So yeah, a lot of people do mention GI side effects from creatine. I think some of that is due to the quality of the supplement that you’re taking.

Tim Ferriss: Yep, I agree.

Tommy Wood: So if you’re taking like Creapure Creatine Monohydrate, that’s what most studies that have tested creatine have used. And there was actually a systematic review meta analysis that just came out that found that across all the studies they could find compared to placebo creatine, didn’t have any additional GI side effects. But also those studies use high quality creatine. Also, not all those studies use 30 grams. So you could certainly get to a point where you’re going to start to have GI effects based on those.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think it also has to do with the fact that my polypharm in the morning when I’m just getting booted up, it’s like I might be having the coffee plus the creatine plus the sardines. Yeah, there’s a lot going into the cocktail of potential disaster, which you do acclimate to. Quick question before I forget, on lactate. Is there any argument to be made for anything that you would ingest or otherwise put into your body, not to avoid doing the intense exercise but to increase the amount of lactate that you uptake into the brain? Or is that something that people have looked at or is that just risky business and to be avoided because you’ll end up in like — I don’t know, like some type of acidosis or some other problem?

Tommy Wood: So people have looked at exogenous lactate itself, usually as lactate salts, just like people have looked at ketone salts. You can bump up blood lactate a little bit, but similar to ketone salts, you don’t get nearly the increases you do with other compounds. You don’t need to do anything to increase brain uptake of endogenous lactate because the brain will generally just take up as much as you’ve got, similar to ketones.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think I misspoke when I was asking the question. I guess it was just increasing the amount of circulating lactates, so your brain just sucks it up like a vacuum.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. No, I think you can make plenty of lactate yourself. So another way to do it, blood flow restriction is another great way to produce lactate with low load. And there were some studies where — well, they have them do leg presses, but like sets of 20 leg presses wearing blood flow restriction cuffs, but that will get you up there as well. Again, several millimolar of lactate. It’s not fun.

Tim Ferriss: I think I’d rather do the Norwegian 4×4. Yeah. Oh, wow, that’s intense.

Tommy Wood: So that’s another way to do it. So if you, for whatever reason, don’t want to do sprints on a row machine, you can probably get up there with some blood flow restriction under low load and high rep. But no, I don’t think there’s anything that I would take to increase lactate, just because you can make it so easily yourself.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So I want to hop on the low flow restriction because I have — what make and model do you use? What’s your kind of tool of choice for the BFR stuff?

Tommy Wood: I use the B Strongs. So they have —

Tim Ferriss: Excuse me?

Tommy Wood: The company is called B Strong.

Tim Ferriss: B-E Strong?

Tommy Wood: No. Capital B Strong.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it.

Tommy Wood: I have no real —

Tim Ferriss: Affiliation.

Tommy Wood: I have no affiliation with them other than I know some of the guys who work there, but I paid for my device myself. So it has leg and arm cuffs, but it comes with like a Sphygmomanometer. One of those blood pressure things to kind of pump it up to get the pressure. And those are the ones I use.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, nice and simple. I’m testing a few different ones right now. So when you travel, people think of exercise as this thing that involves potentially all sorts of machines and you need your kit. There can be a lot of excuses or things that people imagine as obstacles that are not in fact obstacles. So talk to me about your exercise when traveling with blood flow restriction. What does it look like?

Tommy Wood: So as my wife calls it, I have my gym in a bag, which I take everywhere I go when I travel. And it is a set of blood flow restricting cuffs and a set of bands. I use the Black Mountain products bands, which come with handles. And I like them because they come with a lifetime warranty. I break them and snap them all the time and you just email them and be like, “Hey, this broke.” And they just send you a new one and they cost 40 bucks or something like that, so super cost-effective.

Tim Ferriss: Can I pause you for a second?

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Just for people who are not looking at Tommy, you’re freaking gigantic. You look gigantic. You’re wearing a very thick sweatshirt and I can still see your pecs moving around for God’s sake. What are your dimensions here? Not to turn you into like a Playboy Playmate or something.

Tommy Wood: So I’m 6’2″. I’m usually 220 pounds. I usually hang out somewhere around 12 percent body fat.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, strong unit. Okay. The reason that I brought that up is not to flirt with you, although I’m not against that.

Tommy Wood: Oh, I appreciate it. I’m not against it.

Tim Ferriss: No, the reason I wanted to bring it up is people might think there’s somebody out there who’s like an internet keyboard jockey on Reddit who’s living in a basement and squats 135 and is like, “Oh, that guy must be some pencil neck dweeb.” And it’s like, no, actually not. He’s pretty big. And yet you can get, sounds like a decent workout with bands that cost 40 bucks and blood flow restriction. How’s that possible? What do you do?

Tommy Wood: And when I travel, because I’m usually at work, conferences, I’m doing podcasts or whatever, like I don’t have two hours to go to the gym, which I like to have if I’m at home. So I might do 10 to 15 minutes and you put on the cuffs, legs and arms, I’ll do some lunges, like body weight lunges, squats, presses, pushups, and then bicep coals and tricep extensions, and that’s probably it. So a pretty standard protocol, which is essentially in three to four minutes, you accumulate somewhere between 75 and 100 reps. So 30, 20, 20, 20, or 20, 15, 15, 15, 15, something like that, with 30 seconds of rest in between. Try and do one body part at a time, but you can superset them if you’re kind of short on time. That’s it.

And kind of to your point, when we moved into this house, this was now eight years ago, I built my own gym here. But for a long period of time, I didn’t have a gym and I was working from home and all I had was bands and BFR cuffs. And then it wasn’t even the B Strongs. It was like these really cheap ones that kind of look like something that somebody would use to kind of like draw your blood.

Tim Ferriss: Trainspotting, yeah.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, exactly. It looks like a tourniquet to tie up your leg if you’ve blown off your foot. And again, they cost like 20 bucks. They’re probably not the best. But anyway, so I had some of those and some like 40 buck bands and that was all I used to work out for like four or five months. And I didn’t lose any muscle mass or strength. I just got straight back into it afterwards. So you can maintain and gain pretty well as long as you have to do some hardware. BFR can be a little bit painful if you sort of push it, but also very, very safe. It’s been used in rehab, right? All these other things that frail images.

Tim Ferriss: Just for people who are like, “What the hell are they talking about?” I’ll use an analogy. This isn’t exactly what’s happening. But imagine you had a small belt, tiny belt that you put around your upper arms under the shoulders, right at the top of the biceps, let’s just say keep it simple. And then I guess close to the hip on the legs?

Tommy Wood: Yeah, right up in the leg.

Tim Ferriss: And you’re partially occluding blood flow. So you’re not totally cutting off blood flow, but you’re making it a lot harder for blood to get to your arms and your legs.

Tommy Wood: It’s mainly blood to get out.

Tim Ferriss: Blood to get out, okay.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. You’re not compressing the arteries where the blood gets in. You’re stopping the blood from coming out.

Tim Ferriss: The venous return.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it. Yeah, and the net effect is if you’re like Arnold Schwarzenegger and you’re like, “Ah, the pump, I feel like coming.” Yeah, if you want to take that to a 20X extreme and feel very, very, very uncomfortable, BFR is a great way to do it. And again, for people who are like, “Oh, come on man, I squat 315 or whatever.” I’m guessing you probably squat at least 315 or more. And what do you squat? I’m curious now.

Tommy Wood: As of a couple of years ago, 405 is my best squat, better deadlifter than I am a squatter.

Tim Ferriss: What do you deadlift? What’s your PR for deadlifting?

Tommy Wood: 550.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s up there. All right. And I think you would probably agree, if you put somebody in leg cuffs and you’re like, “Yeah, do proper lunges like knee to the ground and go for a 100 yards and come back.” I don’t even think most people could do that, but it’s just like, you’re going to feel it. You are absolutely going to feel it.

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: All right. Gym in a bag. We’ll link to all this stuff in the show notes as well. So I want to list off a couple of things here and then talk about — we can keep bouncing around a lot. Well, on the supplements, I’m going to kind of cut this short and we’ll put things in the show notes, but the periodontal health, mouth health and dementia, the connection there, hence the use of xylitol. Whether that’s the gum, Epic, KaiGum, or air purifiers, mouthwashes. We’ve got all this stuff. So I’m going to link to that in the show notes just in the interest of time and certainly feel free to chime in.

I wanted to talk about cognitive stimulation. So we spoke about dancing earlier. Could you speak to language learning and music? Because I’m realizing, I think accidentally I might have really helped my brain a lot early, which is great as a surprise. But also have next to me an ohana ukulele, which was gifted to me, that has basically just been gathering dust. And after doing prep for this and then looking into it, I’m like, “You know what? I should spend a couple of minutes a day just screwing around with this.” It seems like a great use of time, but could you speak to music and language learning?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So this actually, if we include dance, this comes back to something that we started talking about earlier, which is what are these experiences or what are these activities that you can do with the brain that kind of maximally activate it or increase glucose uptake. And there was a really interesting study that came out recently called Creative Experiences and Brain Clocks. And what it did was —

Tim Ferriss: Creative Experiences and Brain Clocks.

Tommy Wood: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay.

Tommy Wood: So I’ll break that down, there’s different components. So kind of like when you did an MRI scan for your brain, and all those other tests you did, there are various different ways that people can sort of like estimate how old the brain looks, right?

Tim Ferriss: Right. And I don’t know if that’s hugely BS or not. I don’t know. Yeah.

Tommy Wood: It’s a bit of both.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Tommy Wood: But in this context, I think it’s kind of useful because when you think about what happens to the brain as it ages, there are a few things that happen. The structure changes, different parts of it gets smaller, you lose volume, but then functionally also changes. The different networks that we have in the brain that have different functions and activities, they become less discreet and they become more distributed. So you get less of these kinds of very functions, specific, tightly knit networks and connections. And then everything just becomes a little bit more sort of like loose and different areas of the brain get connected together and there’s a bit more of a mismatch. You get this increase in entropy. Initially what we call it is brain entropy. It’s not as discreet. And entropy then decreases again as we get towards the end stage of dementia, just because there’s not much going on in there, unfortunately anymore.

Sorry, that’s the best way I could put it. And so when you look at different ways to quantify how old this brain looks, one way is to look at the structure and the connectivity of the networks and how discreet they are. Things like the frontier parietal network, the salience network, the attention network, like these parts that are really important for executive function, focus, attention, all this kind of stuff. And they tend to lose function as we get older. And the easiest way to do this is with EEG, so electro encephalogram where you basically measure the electrode activity in the brain. And so in this study, what they did is they took a whole bunch of different studies and they looked at these different creative experiences. So one was tango dancing, one was language learning, then there was musicians, they had artists, and they also had video gamers, and they had an interventional study where they had people learn the video game.

And it was StarCraft was the game that they used just in case anybody was wondering. Although if we’re talking about video games as a cognitive stimulus, the one that has the best evidence is Super Mario 3D World, just in case you were interested. Lots of studies with that actually. And what they did is that they compared amateurs to experts, and then they also looked at the effect of an intervention where people actually were trained in this thing. And as you increase in expertise in these different creative, complex arts, you see improved structure and discreteness of these really critical networks that are susceptible to aging as we get older. But the effect was similar in tango dancers versus those who are bilingual versus those who are artists versus video gamers. So there’s some core effect of these complex multisensory stimuli that require us to gain significant expertise and skill in order to perform them that seem to have this broad effect.

So part of this is probably because we’re training our brains to be able to focus and learn, and then part of it is just like the actual engagement in this complex task. And so when you look at, say, languages, two very good colleagues of mine at the University of Washington, Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat, they study individuals who are bilingual. And what they see, they’ve done this from both measuring brain activity and different types of cognitive function, and then trying to model what’s actually going on. And what it looks like is that those who grew up bilingual perform better on tasks requiring executive function. So things like response inhibition, which is you kind of want to do something but you stop yourself just in time. Normally when I talk about it’s like, you know when you have these thoughts of like, “Oh, well, what would happen if I just opened this window and jumped out?” Or you think something and you stop yourself just before you say it, because it’s a really bad idea because it’s like your boss —

Tim Ferriss: How do they test that? Are you using like a Stroop test as a — I’m just throwing something out there.

Tommy Wood: Yeah, So often it’s like a go no-go task. So you’re presented with different stimuli and it’s whether you react to it or not, but like a Stroop is partly an example of that, which is where people don’t know what Stroop is.

Tim Ferriss: You should explain it. Yeah.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So you get shown words that spell a color and they are also colored. And then you have to respond based on whether the word spells the color you’re looking for or is the color you’re looking for. And so it like requires you to juggle these multiple things. And so yeah, they use tests like that. But basically it seems that because you spend your entire life having to suppress one language while you activate another and then move back and forth, your brain becomes better at suppressing these different — but at the same time, interestingly, it seems that you become less good at other things. So none of this is good or bad, but people who are bilingual seem to be less responsive to what’s immediately happening around them in the outside world. And that’s probably, again, just because of how their brains have adapted to these different stimuli.

But you do see that those who grew up bilingual have a decreased risk of dementia, or if they do get dementia, they get it later. But you also see improvements. If you train in a language, even like using an app on Duolingo, they’ve shown that, in older adults, you use Duolingo, and of course you have to actually move through it, not just stare at it for 30 minutes a day, but that you see significant improvements in executive function and you see the same thing with music learning. So there is something to these complex, very human kind of skills that have these carryover effects into these kinds of core components of cognitive function.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’d never heard about the response inhibition with subjects who are bilingual. But it might explain in a totally separate battery of cognitive testing that I did, which was much more rigorous, I think, than what I did a few days ago. My digit string memorization, despite all my mnemonic trickery, is very bad because it’s only flashed for a second and then you have to do your best. If you gave me a bunch of time, I could use all my trickery.

But if it’s just a flash and it’s kind of relying on, I guess, my hardware, then I’m very bad to the point where people might have some concern, but I’ve always been like that. Conversely, with something like this, there was a test that was pretty much exclusively the Stroop test, but it had a few things that were very similar. And I was like, I’m exaggerating, but tense standard deviations outside of the norm. I was so much better that they were like, “Why are you so good at this? We’ve actually never seen something like this.” And it could be studying all these different languages. I don’t know, maybe. Who knows?

Tommy Wood: So do you know what? I’m actually the same, and we’re kind of convincing ourselves that this is real, just because it’s the case for us. So I often do cognitive function tests on people we work with in studies and that kind of stuff, and we do this full battery, all the things that you mentioned. And on every test, memory, all these other things, I’m just like, I’m perfectly average. And you always think that, oh, I’m so smart, so therefore I should be at what X standard deviation. But no, I’m perfectly average on everything except for response inhibition tests or the Stroop test. And I also grew up speaking multiple languages, so maybe that’s the thing. We don’t know.

Tim Ferriss: Which languages do you know?

Tommy Wood: So I speak Icelandic because my mom’s Icelandic, so half my family were in Iceland. And then I lived in Germany and France when I was a kid for various periods of time. And then I did my PhD in Norway and I taught in the medical school, so I had to learn Norwegian so that I could teach Norwegians medicine.

Tim Ferriss: Wow, that’s hardcore. Yeah, there’s quite a few. And for people out there who are like, “Well, I wasn’t raised bi or trilingual.” I didn’t really even get started until I was 15, 16. Always assumed I was very, very bad at languages for reasons that were mostly related to the schooling and not to any inherent ability. But I’m also thinking about tango as an example, because I spent a lot of time doing tango. I’m not sure if you have any familiarity with this chapter in my life, but in 2004, basically spent like six to eight hours a day doing tango in Argentina. And competing ultimately going to the world championships and all this craziness. But you have the physical component, but like you said, it’s actually a pretty complex cocktail. And in my case, sure you have the dancing, but you also have Spanish. I was learning Spanish at the same time. And then you have the music, and I’m wondering if studies have been done looking at the effect of listening to or having to track different types of music versus producing music. Has anyone looked at that?

Tommy Wood: Not as much. Certainly frequent music listening is associated with a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline as much as you can get rid of all the sociological pieces of that. There are some studies looking at training adults in musical theory, which requires actually listening to music and then pulling out the different components that seem to be, again, associated with similar benefits to say learning to play a musical instrument. So I think even some of that attentive listening and actually engaging with the music as a listener seems to have some of the benefits in addition to producing the music yourself.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, because with dance, obviously, if you actually have a hope of dancing well, you have to listen very, very carefully to the music. And in particular, you could have choreographed dancing, but what interested me about tango which I didn’t realize in advance of getting to Argentina, is that the vast majority of it, tango de salon is improvised. So if you’re going to compete in that particular style of tango, salon tango, you don’t know what music’s going to be played and then they just serve up whatever the songs happen to be. So you’re not only responding to the music, but you’re memorizing music. And in any case, makes me want to give back to Argentina.

Tommy Wood: Maybe it’s all that time off, that’s why your hippocampus has been catching up with you.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Oh, add that to my litany of complaints. So I wanted to highlight something. You’ve mentioned this. I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time on it right now, but sensory loss, hearing, vision, getting aids/surgery as soon as possible since those seem to be so correlated to increased risk or onset of dementia. I want to mention two things and then I’ll let you rip. The second one is — now, I’m kind of paraphrasing here, but error detection triggers adaptation. So the importance of failure, because with a lot of the hand wavy, pseudo-scientific games and this, that, and the other thing that are sold for supposedly helping people with memory cognition, et cetera, a lot of them don’t seem to check that box. So maybe if you could speak to the sensory loss and then the kind of error detection and defining that and the importance of it.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So there are several studies that suggest that sensory loss, particularly vision loss through cataracts and hearing loss through age-related hearing loss, presbycusis are associated with an increased risk of dementia and that this risk is reversible. So, if you have cataract surgery, then that increased risk is no longer there. And if you get hearing aids, again, that risk is no longer there. Only of those two randomized controlled trials have only been done with hearing aids and they only showed significant benefit in those who were at an increased risk of dementia for other reasons. So, like poor health, cardiovascular disease, these other things.

So, it may be that it’s exacerbating other underlying risks, but equally we can think about two broad reasons why sensory loss might lead to cognitive decline and why often as people get older, they’re like, “I don’t want to get hearing aid because then I’m old,” right?

Tim Ferriss: Conceited defeat.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. And so, this happened with my mom actually and she recently got hearing aids and I encouraged her. I was like, “As soon as there’s a thing that you need, you should get it.” And it’s had a dramatic effect on our quality of life. And so, we know that if you lose an input to an area of the brain, that area of the brain is going to decrease function as a result, right? It’s no longer being used and with the process of allostasis or constantly adapting to the demands that are placed on you, that part of the brain is going to diminish its function. So, that’s part of it. But I think a bigger part is that when you lose senses, you no longer engage in the world in the same way that you did previously.

You go out of the house less, you socialize less, you do less tango dancing because you don’t feel like you can engage with it in the same way. So, I think there’s a lot of benefit from recovering lost senses that’s not the same as, so if you are born or if you never had sight or you never had hearing, that’s not associated with increased risk because you learn to engage with the world in other ways, right? So, it’s the loss of that engagement that I think is important. Then the error part, the easiest way to think about this is that if we’re trying to improve function and structure of certain parts of the brain, that allows us to have greater reserve, greater total capacity.

And therefore if we do lose some volume or some capacity as we get older, we have more to lose. So, we’re less likely to get to the point where we have significant deficits. In order to drive improvements in structure and function, we need to drive these processes that we call neuroplasticity, right? New connections, new branches, all the supporting machinery, the other cells that are necessary. We think a lot about neurons, but there’s a whole bunch of other cells and stuff in your brain that are really important as well that are part of this response to stimulus.

But to drive neuroplasticity, you essentially have to have a difference between capacity and expectation, right? So, the best way to uncover that is with mistakes or errors. If you —

Tim Ferriss: Kind of like muscular training to failure or —

Tommy Wood: Exactly. Yeah. So, if you don’t ever get to the point where you’re no longer capable of doing the thing that you want to do, nothing needs to change. You can already —

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Your body doesn’t need to adapt.

Tommy Wood: Exactly. Yeah. So, that’s essentially it. And this is what becomes important in dancing, learning languages, learning music, is that you’re having these opportunities to fail to get beyond your current capabilities and that’s what drives the processes of learning and plasticity.

Tim Ferriss: What else do you have in your personal regimen of non-negotiables? Obviously, you’re lifting weights, you’re doing your blood flow restriction torture every once in a while. I don’t know if you’re much of a ballroom dancer.

Tommy Wood: I was a field raver in my youth, but I was never much of a ballroom dancer.

Tim Ferriss: Get that man some glow sticks. So, a big part of the reason I got elbow surgery was to get back into rock climbing, which I think is just a phenomenal, phenomenal sport for mental and physical development. I mean, it’s just a kinesthetic puzzle on a wall. I mean, and was really inspired over the last two years seeing people in places like Colorado, Idaho, Utah, where I’d go into these gyms and you see people in their ’60s and ’70s who are doing stuff that I can’t even imagine doing physically. And they meet a couple times a week and I was like, “Wow, okay. If you can have that kind of longevity in this sport, that seems like a great investment.” Plus I just really, really enjoy doing it.

But what are some other non-negotiables, right? If you look at all the possible things you could do, all the things you do and you’re like, “All right, these are the things that are meaningful and that I stick with consistently, what falls in that bucket?” Because a lot of people will get these like 27 things, 47 things you can do to improve your brain health lists or whatever. And even if they want to do all those things, there’s no way they’re going to. So, there’s a question of sustainability or adherence as well, right? So, yeah, what are some of the other non-negotiables for you?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So, I think the one that we haven’t talked about that really as non-negotiable is sleep.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, let’s talk about it.

Tommy Wood: Yeah. And I think this is the major thing that’s missing from these studies looking at dementia prevention as a risk factor. And I think inadequate sleep, really seen in so many studies now that’s associated with increased risk of dementia. So, that’s something that I very consistently make sure that I get enough of. That’s like the one thing that really is non-negotiable. I don’t mind if my diet gets a bit crappy for a few days or I don’t mind if I can’t get to the gym for a few days. This stuff integrates over months and years, but if I can only focus on one thing, then sleep is really critical for me.

But I will say one thing that I noticed a lot was that historically, I used to really get in my head about my sleep, and I know this is going to be the case for many people who have tracked their sleep or used wearables or thought about the importance of sleep, right? And so, something that changed recently, particularly because I spent a lot of time looking at the research, and this also affected me at home because my wife was like, “If you don’t sleep and then you don’t get your coffee, I don’t want to be around you because —

Tim Ferriss: Picked up a moderate heroin habit?

Tommy Wood: A lot of it was honestly self-induced because I thought I didn’t sleep well, therefore I’m not going to function well. I’m going to be grumpy, like all this kind of stuff, right? And we know that this is influenced by outside factors, this is influenced by our own thought processes. There are studies that have shown this, randomizing people to be told by their wearable they didn’t sleep well even though when they slept just fine, right? And what you see in the short term, long term, sleep is critical, right? Absolutely. And any sleep you can get more than you are having now, the better, right? So, if you sleep six hours a night, you can get six and a half, great. Don’t think that you have to sleep eight hours.

If you can get an extra half an hour, that’s amazing. But in short periods of time, actually sleep deprivation doesn’t have as much of a negative effect on cognitive function as we think. And this is just important so that we can go about our day-to-day lives and perform well when we don’t sleep well. So, what happens

Tim Ferriss: Especially when you have a chalkbag full of creatine at your desk.

Tommy Wood: So, the creatine helps, but equally like we travel, we have kids, all this kind of stuff. Sometimes, you’re just not going to sleep well. But in short periods of time over a few days, what happens is that processing speed slows down, but accuracy doesn’t. So, the quality of your work is just as good. It just might take you a little longer and mood is affected much more than performance. So, actually we don’t perform less well. We just feel more grumpy about how we performed. And so, actually, knowing this, I then just completely changed how I approached my sleep. So, if I didn’t sleep well, I’m like, “Do you know what? I’m actually going to be fine.” And then it turns out I am fine.

So, that’s like, yes, sleep is critical, but how we think about these things I think is really important. And then another thing, so like important factors are going to be like avoiding excessive alcohol, don’t smoke. But then two things that you’ve mentioned we haven’t touched upon fully, I’ll like briefly talk about. One is air quality and air pollution, which is a significant risk factor for dementia. A lot of these studies are quite recent looking at say wildfire exposure and things like that. But even living near roads, like in the short term is associated with greater cardiovascular risk, higher blood pressure, which you can improve with having an air filter.

And of all the different like metabolic type risk factors for dementia, high blood sugar and high blood pressure are the two most important, lipids and other things are important as well, but those are consistently the highest risk factors. So, managing blood pressure is really important. And if so you live near somewhere with a lot of air pollution, then air filters certainly seem to help there. And then oral health was the final one. So, the reason I say this because I appreciate that I’m British and I’m going to tell you you should go to the dentist. So, historically when I lived in the UK, I did not go to the dentist very, very frequently.

And actually, the first time I went to the dentist here in the US, I had this one metal crown from back when I was a medical student and my dentist looked at it and he was like, “You didn’t get that done in the US.” That was his first comment. But gum disease, so gingivitis, especially if it advances the periodontitis, is significantly associated with an increased risk of dementia. This is probably both due to an increased like systemic inflammatory effect, plus those bacteria can get into the bloodstream. They’re found in atherosclerotic plaques in heart disease. They’ve been found in amyloid plaques in the brain. So, treating gum disease is really important, whatever that requires.

And that’s why I mentioned xylitol to you because there are several studies showing that xylitol gum or xylitol mouthwash can improve the oral microbiota, decrease some of these like cavity and periodontitis causing bacteria like Strep mutans and Porphyromonas gingivalis. So it’s just like a really low risk kind of thing. There he is with this gum.

Tim Ferriss: A low risk in my pocket.

Tommy Wood: A low risk thing to consider. And I don’t think they’ve looked at it by APOE4 genotype, but things that have an anti-inflammatory effect or decreased inflammatory burden seem to have an outsized benefit for those who are APOE4 carriers. And so, gum disease would obviously be one of those that’s worth keeping an eye on.

Tim Ferriss: That’s part of the reason not to keep banging on this drum because I know it’s not the shoe that fits everyone, but that’s another reason for my fascination with ketones, just remarkably anti-inflammatory on a couple of different levels. So, for folks who might be wondering, and we’ll put these in the show notes as well, air purifiers, do you mind if I just read from this email that you sent to me?

Tommy Wood: Sure.

Tim Ferriss: Because of course I’m such a stickler. I’m like, “What exactly make and model?” So, yeah, I’ll just read from this. The blood pressure study I mentioned — this is I equals Tommy — use the HealthMate, that’s one word. JSPR is good, that’s J-S-P-R. As are most of the Blueair, one word, Blueair models tailored to the size of the room. The Coway, C-O-W-A-Y Airmega is a good budget option. So, we’ll link to all these in the show notes. This is one, God with travel, such a pain in the ass, although I think it was James Nestor who wrote the book Breath, who was giving me just some horrifying quantified self data related to looking at like CHO2 concentration in various hotels around and airplanes and so on.

And so, I don’t think he’ll stay in a hotel that has sealed windows. I think it’s part of his policy because —

Tommy Wood: Yeah, high CO2 really negatively impacts sleep. So, like lots of people in a small room that’s not ventilated, that can definitely negatively impact sleep. So we always have a window open or something for that reason.

Tim Ferriss: Anything else that you do for sleep besides not becoming too orthorexic about it and like freaking out on the wearables and stuff, which is a real thing for sure. So, besides recognizing that you’re going to be fine, humans have been dealing with this for a long time, what else would you say, right? I would imagine there’s things people have probably heard like keeping the temperature, whatever it might be, 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, et cetera. Other things that you find particularly helpful?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So, things that have helped me a lot, I stop work before dinner. I don’t do work after dinner unless I really, really have to. And that helps a lot because I find I ruminate a lot more if I do work late into the evening. A basic shutdown routine, I put on the blue light blocking glasses, they’re probably just placebo at this point, but I put them on and my brain is like, “Oh, it’s bedtime.” And then I read fiction before I go to sleep. Quite a recent purchase was an eight sleep, which has been amazing because I tend to get quite hot when I sleep, so that’s helped a bunch. So, I just helped stay cool. And then I wear an eye mask, which I really like for blocking out light.

And there were also some very nice studies on that. One of my favorite studies looking at eye masks, you ever see this one where in the control group, they had them wear a Zorro mask? So they were still wearing a mask, but the eyes were cut out.

Tim Ferriss: No.

Tommy Wood: And this was during the summer when light would come in early in the morning, would disrupt sleep and they saw significant improvements in cognitive function in those wearing the regular eye mask versus like the Zorro mask.

Tim Ferriss: The Zorro?

Tommy Wood: Yeah, it was hilarious. I think that’s probably my list.

Tim Ferriss: Got it. I’m going to ask you something specific about sleep, but just because I have it in front of me to ask you, vitamin K2, do you supplement K2 or do you get it from something else?

Tommy Wood: I do generally supplement just like a few micrograms a day, maybe 15 or 20, but that’s mainly because it comes with my vitamin D that I was supplementing particularly in the winter. In the summer, I get plenty of sun exposure on bare skin, but in the winter, can’t do that in Seattle. But I also don’t mind a little bit of natto or some fermented foods that would have K2 in as well. So, don’t need to supplement, but certainly

Tim Ferriss: Stinky spiderwebs. If anybody likes the sound of stinky spiderwebs, try natto, N-A-T-T-O. It’s the one that Japanese people like to give foreigners to watch the face. Some people like it. I can handle a little bit. I can handle a little bit.

Tommy Wood: I mean, I grew up eating rotten shark in Iceland.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that stuff is so fucking bad. I went to this place called Hotel Ranga, I think it’s Ranga, to bring my family. My mom had always, her whole life wanted to see the northern lights. And so we went there in the middle of the winter. By the way, folks, not a whole lot of light. It’s like twilight for a few hours. That’s all you get. But there was some fermented shark celebratory day and we drove to what looked like, and I think it was a gas station, but had a restaurant attached to it and ate this fermented shark. How would you describe it?

It was like, I mean, fermented shark as you would imagine, but like eating something soaked in like ammonia, like the pungency when it hits your sinuses is like smelling salt. I mean, it’s so —

Tommy Wood: So it is ammonia. So to make Greenland shark, which is the type of shark edible, so Greenland sharks don’t have kidneys. So their tissue, just their body accumulates urea, because they don’t pee it out. So in order to make it edible, that urea has to break down to ammonia and then it becomes “edible” in quotation marks. And so, it is ammonia that you’re tasting, but it’s like it’s got the texture of tuna and the taste of a really, really, really strong blue cheese that you peed on.

Tim Ferriss: I will say, I wasn’t really hankering for a return trip to that particular gas station to eat fermented shark, but watching my brother try to eat it was one of the most entertaining moments I’d had in a long time.

Tommy Wood: So, you know you’re supposed to alternate shark with Brennivín, which is Icelandic aquavit. And so, like you use the shark, you eat the shark, then you use the aquavit to take away the taste of the shark, you use the shark, take away the taste of the Brennivín, and then you just continue that until —

Tim Ferriss: You just get hammered enough that you don’t care that you’re eating fermented pissed sharks?

Tommy Wood: Exactly. So, actually, I don’t mind the shark that much. There’s one thing that’s much, much worse. If you ever have a chance to try Surströmming, which is a Swedish fermented herring in a can, that is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. It’s terrible. Actually, if you look it up, there are all these YouTube videos of people who get it in the US and they open it and the smell comes and then they immediately throw up. It’s like you open the tin and you take out these rotting bones of herring that you put on bread. Highly recommended.

Tim Ferriss: Yum. All right, I know what I’m doing for New Year’s. All right. So, sleep, do you have a position on the DORAs on the dual orexin receptor antagonists because I’ve chatted with folks, including Matt Walker, who’s very credible in the space with respect to sleep research, the potential that DORAs could help with the clearance of beta amyloid, what is it? pTau217, et cetera, and possibly be of some help in preventing the accumulation of things that later contribute to Alzheimer’s. I mean, it’s not like the vote is in and it’s 100 percent, but there seems to be a couple of interesting publications around it, including in humans. Do you have a position or any thoughts on it?

Tommy Wood: Yeah. So, very quickly, we know that sleep quality and quantity affect amyloid accumulation in the brain. That can be seen over short periods and long periods. And some of that work is from Matt Walker’s lab. And he’s even done studies that show that later in life, if you can improve the amount of sleep that you get, then that’s associated with a lower overall amyloid burden. I think that some of this, we get very focused on amyloid. It’s a part of the picture of Alzheimer’s dementia, just like you said, it’s not the full picture. But I think we look at it and it’s a marker for all the things that you should be clearing out of the brain when you sleep that you aren’t, right? Amyloid is one of those things.

There are probably many other things as well. So, the DORAs have now several studies in different states within insomnia, in sleep apnea, these states where we know people are getting lower quality sleep and they certainly seem to improve that. I think that in individuals who have some kind of sleep issue, be that insomnia, something else that’s going to prevent high quality sleep, then improving that is certainly going to be beneficial. Right now, the DORAs are now the best option. Previously, people recommended trazodone, which is like, we talked previously, the least worst option because it doesn’t negatively affect sleep architecture, unlike many of the other sedatives that people might use to help sleep.

But if you’re sleeping fine, or you manage to maintain high quality sleep, as you get older, I don’t think we need to start taking DORAs to prevent Alzheimer’s because I think your sleep is probably already doing the job that it’s doing. And there are studies that show that increased cognitive stimulation in older adults improves sleep quality, or that engaging in cognitively stimulating activities helps to offset some of the potential increased risks that we would have with poor or less good deep sleep, which is when a lot of this clearance happens.

So, I think a lot of the other things that we mentioned already, physical activity we know improves sleep quality. So, I wouldn’t jump straight to DORAs, but in somebody who does have insomnia and say CBTI, so CBT for insomnia doesn’t help them, or some of these other things that we can do to improve sleep and those don’t work, and you’ve ruled out anything sinister, then I think they’re now our best option to help support sleep.

Tim Ferriss: All right. We have covered a lot. I want to know why you decided to do something very difficult, which is write a book, The Stimulated Mind. What was the driver behind this and who is the book for?

Tommy Wood: I like to joke that the book is for anybody with a brain. The subtitle is about preventing dementia, but really a ton of it is just about cognitive function and cognitive performance in general. So even people who are younger and aren’t thinking about dementia yet, although like you said, it’s worth thinking about it earlier than you think.

So I think for most people who think about how their brains work or want their brains to perform better and/or want to prevent or minimize their risk of dementia long term, it’s got what I think are the big rocks and the tactics for how to address those that we know substantially increase dementia risk, all those things we talked about earlier that contribute to those dementias that are potentially preventable. And the reason I wrote it is because I didn’t think that book really existed. People might focus on one particular area or they might focus on everything, right?

There are books on dementia prevention that are just like endless tables of blood tests and supplements and this stuff that just like most people are never going to do, right? It’s not going to be sustainable. I didn’t really see a middle ground, but equally, I wanted it to be very heavily referenced. So if people want to get into the references, I have a reference list. It’s going to be 2,000 papers, all in humans, and it’s cited in the text, right? I have like little super script citations in the text.

Tim Ferriss: You teased the subtitle a little bit. It’s a good subtitle. So, I want to give it some real estate here. So, The Stimulated Mind subtitle, Future Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age. I’m looking at the Amazon page for the first time. I hadn’t looked at it. I had no idea that you know Kelly and Juliet Starrett. Those are two very close friends of mine and you got a very nice quote from Dr. Kelly and Juliet for the book. That’s fantastic.

Tommy Wood: So, I only really connected with them about a year ago, but they’ve been so, so helpful. What do you do when you wrote a book and how do you get it out there and how do you get people to read it? They’ve given me so much of their time and help. They’ve been amazing.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they’re fantastic. All right. So, “Dr. Wood,” that’s you, “explains that a brain that improves with age is the result not of expensive pills, far off discoveries or strict lifestyle optimizations, but rather of actions within our control, diet, sleep, physical activity, social connection, and stress tolerance.” And obviously it goes on and on. But clearly, you have a lot of very practical, specific advice that people can implement.

And what else makes this book different?

Tommy Wood: So I think those things that I mentioned make it different. I think it’s very practical and approachable, but very science driven. And if people want to dig into the references, those are available. And then I think, like towards the end, there’s all these different areas where we talked about nutrition, sleep, physical exercise I give, like how you would approach each of those things in terms of supporting cognitive function and minimizing dementia risk. But then I bring them together in a model of how I think people can implement this in their daily lives. How do I just pick one thing?

And actually, does picking just one thing help to support like the overall function of the brain? And the answer is yes, it does because when you sleep better, so say if you focus on improving sleep, you’re more sociable, you’re more likely to engage in cognitively challenging tasks. Your blood sugar improves, your blood pressure improves, right? So, just changing one area, suddenly the whole network shifts in your favor. And that’s the case from almost anywhere where you approach it. And I think that means that people are much more likely to actually start doing this stuff and realize that it doesn’t require a ton of work to start moving the needle and then these things compound over time.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. All right. The Stimulated Mind, folks, go grab a copy. Obviously, I hate when people say obviously, but I’m going to say it. Obviously, Dr. Tommy has the credentials, has the expertise, has the bonafides with respect to research in humans and has provided a lot that you can use in this conversation and a lot more is in The Stimulated Mind. So, check it out. Why on Earth is your X account called Dr. Ragnar?

Tommy Wood: So I first started blogging around the time you first started podcasting. And I remember listening to your first interviews with Don D’Agostino back in the day when I was in my PhD chair writing blog posts. But my middle name is Ragnar, so I created a website. It was Dr. Ragnar. That was initially where I did my stuff.

Tim Ferriss: So let me think about this for a second. I’m going to make myself probably regret asking this question, but does Ragnar mean anything? Because now I’m thinking of Ragnarok and if those two have any connection. Does it mean anything in particular?

Tommy Wood: So, no. So, you’re right. Ragnarok is like the final battle for Valhalla, right? And actually, there were some online gaming accounts where I used the name Ragnarok. No, I think what it means, the translation for the old Norse is like “wise counselor.” I think that was another reason why I picked it, because it was very self-important as a 30-year-old health blogger, but it was my grandfather’s name and then these names get passed down in the family. Technically, because I was the firstborn grandson. It should have been my first name, but my dad was English and it was like, “People are just going to make fun of him at school. He’s going to get bullied if he’s called Ragnar.”

It’s very cool now, because of Vikings and all these other TV shows where Ragnar now appears. But yeah, that’s —

Tim Ferriss: I mean, you could make it work, but Dr. Ragnar Wood also has a strange combo one, two to it. All right, got it. @drragnar. R-A-G-N-A-R on X for people who want to check it out.

Tommy Wood: To be honest, I don’t use X. So, you can follow me on X, but you won’t see anything.

Tim Ferriss: But people can find, presumably there’s something at drtommywood.com, drtommywood.com. So, that’s the home base online.

Tommy Wood: Instagram.

Tim Ferriss: Instagram?

Tommy Wood: @drtommywood. Again, drtommywood.

Tim Ferriss: @drtommywood. All right folks. So, you got it. Check out The Stimulated Mind. I’m a huge fan of what you do. I am going to try to improve my and arm situation with more use of BFR and bands. And is there anything else you would like to say before we wind this to a close? Anything you’d like to ask of the audience, point them to, requests, complaints, anything that comes to mind?

Tommy Wood: No. Other than if you do happen to pick a copy of the book and you do have any complaints, do send them to me. One of the reasons why I wanted to make it so that every statement that I have in the book has a citation, you can go, you can read that paper. If you disagree with my interpretation of it, I want to know. I can’t promise that I have all the answers. So, that will help me learn more. So, yeah, if you have a complaint, just tell me about it.

Tim Ferriss: All right, Tommy. I really appreciate all the time, man. This was great. Took tons of notes for myself, which is always a good sign. So, thanks for carving out a bit of time to be on the show. Really appreciate it.

Tommy Wood: Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me. This is so much fun.

Tim Ferriss: And for everybody listening as per usual, we’ll provide copious links and show notes at tim.blog/podcast, tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and also to yourself. As Jack Kornfield says, if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. Thanks for tuning in.

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

2026-01-28 22:40:54

Dr. Tommy Wood (@drtommywood) is an associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington, where his research focuses on brain health across the lifespan. This includes therapies for brain injury in newborns, prevention and treatment of adult brain trauma, and the factors that contribute to long-term cognitive function and cognitive decline. Tommy received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, a medical degree from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Physiology and Neuroscience from the University of Oslo.

Alongside his academic work, Tommy is head scientist for Motorsport at Hintsa Performance, overseeing health and performance programs for multiple Formula 1 drivers. He also helped to found the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, is head of research for the dementia prevention charity Food for the Brain, and serves as chief science officer for brain health coaching company BetterBrain. He has also trained and competed in multiple sports, coming in the top 20 in the world’s first ever fully off-road ironman triathlon, and 2nd at Washington’s Strongest Man in 2024.

Tommy is co-host of the Better Brain Fitness podcast and author of the forthcoming book The Stimulated Mind.

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