🎙️ Episode 23 - Rewiring Executive Function: Metabolism, Sleep & Cognition With Dermot Rock
In this episode of the ReeThink Podcast, Rudi talks with Irish founder and former soldier Dermot Rock, creator of Cogn8, about how much of your “intelligence” is fixed – and how much is physiology you can change. After a parachute accident, years of seizures and brain fog, and a startup that failed at the regulatory finish line, cognitive testing showed his performance was “on the floor” despite outward success.
Refusing to accept that as fate or IQ, Dermot turned himself into a full‑time N=1 experiment, overhauled his underlying physiology and improved his measured cognition by about 40%. Today, he helps fund managers, founders and other high‑consequence operators upgrade decision‑making by fixing sleep, metabolism and movement before chasing hacks.
We talk about:
- Why most high performers never test their cognition – and what happens when you finally see your numbers.
- How blood sugar, insulin resistance and “energy stability” impact your prefrontal cortex and long‑term thinking.
- Building a real‑time cognitive dashboard with labs, genetics, wearables and continuous glucose monitoring.
- Activity vs exercise, why 10 minutes with a kettlebell can beat an hour at the gym, and how VO2 max links to brain oxygenation.
- Sleep as “taking out the metabolic trash” – and why 7–8 hours of quality sleep is non‑negotiable for good decisions.
- Sugar, “cheap dopamine” and the environment that keeps your brain in circus‑level plate spinning instead of calm execution.
- How a 3% dip in clarity at the wrong moment can compound into millions in opportunity cost.
- Dermot’s vision for a measurable physiological state of “decision‑making readiness” for leaders and investors.
If you’re a founder, investor, executive – or just suspect you’re leaving cognitive capacity on the table – this conversation reframes how you think about your brain, your lifestyle and your potential.
00:00 – Welcome & who is Dermot Rock?
02:30 – Parachute accident, brain injury & years of seizures
08:30 – Seeing cognitive scores “on the floor” for the first time
11:15 – From IQ myths to brain plasticity and trainable cognition
15:00 – Why metabolism and blood sugar are central to clear thinking
19:00 – Testing, dashboards and measuring what actually moves the dial
23:30 – Sleep as metabolic housekeeping for the brain
33:00 – Sugar, cheap dopamine and the modern “monkey mind”
38:00 – High‑stakes operators, tiny dips in clarity and huge opportunity costs
44:30 – Activity vs exercise, VO2 max and oxygen for the brain
51:00 – Time is not the problem: building tiny, high‑leverage habits
1:03:00 – Dermot’s “big three” for better cognition: sleep, energy, exercise
1:11:30 – Vision for Cognate and the future of decision‑making readiness
