[powerpress]
My mother has Alzheimer’s.
I’ve been sitting with that for years — trying to metabolize what it means for her, for our family, and quietly, for myself. Because when you watch this disease dismantle someone you love, you can’t help but ask: is this coming for me? Is there anything I can actually do?
For a long time, the answer felt like no. Cognitive decline has been framed as a genetically dictated inevitability. A slow erosion that begins imperceptibly and ends somewhere none of us want to go.
That framing, it turns out, may be more fiction than fact.
My guest today is Dr. Tommy Wood, neuroscientist, physician, and associate professor at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Stimulated Mind. His thesis is disarmingly simple: the brain is a product of the environment. And if the environment can be changed, your trajectory is ultimately malleable.
At the center of his work is a simple but radical idea: that how we use our brains is the primary determinant of how they will function.
“The primary driver of neuroplasticity is errors and making mistakes.”
– TOMMY WOOD
Here’s what we get into:
- Why cognitive decline is not inevitable — and the science supports it
- The 3-S Model: Stimulus, Supply, & Support
- Exercise: the specific types that protect gray matter vs. white matter
- How AI and social media overstimulate us in all the wrong ways
- Why retirement may be one of the worst things we’ve done to the aging brain
- Supplements: separating signal from noise
- Why it’s never too late
For those who prefer a visual experience, the conversation is available on YouTube. As always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Peace + Plants,
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- Connect with Tommy: Website | Instagram | Threads
- Book: The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age
- Publications
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Thank The Team: I do not do this alone. Send your love to Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music; with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis and additional music by Moby; Dan Drake & Morgan McCrae for video, & editing; graphics by graphics by Alejandro Ribadeneira & Bryan Lawrence; portraits by Davy Greenberg; copywriting by Ben Pryor; and theme music by Tyler Piatt, Trapper Piatt & Hari Mathis.
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