Andrew Huberman

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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So you have this basic learning session and then a period of time afterwards in which the brain can rehearse what it just did at the beginning of learning any skill. And as we approach from uncertain to skilled to mastery, we want to reduce uncertainty. And that's really what the nervous system is doing. It's trying to eliminate errors and hone in on the correct trajectories.

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If you perform a lot of repetitions and then you use a period immediately after, we don't really have a name for this post-learning kind of idle time for the brain. The brain isn't idle at all. It's actually scripting all these things in reverse that allow for deeper learning and more quick learning.

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But if we fill that time with other things, if we are focused on our phones or we're focused on learning something else, we're focusing on our performance, that's not going to serve us well. At least it's not going to serve the skill learning well. So please, if you're interested in more rapid skill learning, try introducing these sessions. They can be quite powerful.

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But once you're familiar with something and you're performing it well every once in a while, you're accomplishing it better every once in a while, then you can start to cue your attention in very deliberate ways. And so we hear a lot about chunking, about breaking things down into their component parts. But one of the biggest challenges for skill learning is knowing where to place your attention.

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So to dial out again, we're building a protocol across this episode, early sessions. Maybe it's the first one, maybe it's the first 10. But during those initial sessions, the key is to make many errors, to let the reward process govern the plasticity, let the errors open the plasticity, and then after the learning sessions to let the brain go idle.

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at least for a short period of time, and of course, to maximize sleep. As you start incorporating more sessions, you start to gain some skill level, learning to harness and focus your attention on particular features of the movement, independent of the rewards and the feedback, right?

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So the reward is no longer whether or not you struck the target correctly, but simply the motor movement, focusing your, for instance, in a dart throw on the action of your arm, that is embedding the plasticity in the motor pattern most deeply. That's what's been shown by the scientific literature. So we're breaking the learning process down into its component parts.

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as we get more and more skilled, meaning as we make fewer and fewer errors per a given session per unit time, that's when attention can start to migrate from one feature such as the motor sequence to another feature, which is perhaps one's stance and another sequence component of the sequence, which would be the result that's one getting on a trial to trial basis.

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Some of you may be wondering about speed of movement. There are some data, meaning some decent papers out there showing that ultra slow movements, performing a movement essentially in slow motion can be beneficial for enhancing the rate of skill learning. However,

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So let's say you're a runner and you're starting to do some speed work and some sprints and you're running and you can kind of feel whether or not you're running correctly or maybe even have a coach

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at least from my read of the literature, it appears that ultra slow movements should be performed after some degree of proficiency has already been gained in that particular movement. Now that's not the way I would have thought about it.

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I would have thought, well, you know, if you're learning how to do a proper kick or a punch in martial arts or something that ultra slow movements at first are going to be the way that one can, you know, best learn how to perform a movement. And then you just gradually increase the speed. And it turns out that's not the case. And I probably should have known that.

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And you should probably know that because it turns out that when you do ultra slow movements, two things aren't available to you. One is the proprioceptive feedback is not accurate because fast movements of limbs are very different than slow movements of limbs. So you don't get the opportunity to build in the proprioceptive feedback.

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But the other reason why it doesn't work is that it's too accurate. You don't generate errors. And so the data that I was able to find showed that very slow movements can be beneficial if one is already proficient in a practice. When should you start to introduce slow learning?

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Well, it appears that once you're hitting success rates of about 25 or 30%, that's where the super slow movements can start to be beneficial. But if you're still performing things at a rate of, you know, five or 10% correct and the rest are errors, then the super slow movements are probably not going to benefit you that much. Also super slow movements are not really applicable to a lot of things.

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For instance, you could imagine throwing a dart super slow motion, but if you actually try and throw an actual dart, the dart's just going to fall to the floor, obviously. Some of you already have a fair degree of proficiency of skill in a given practice or sport or instrument. And if you're in this sort of advanced intermediate or advanced levels of proficiency for something,

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and they're correcting your stride, that's closed loop because as you go, you can adjust your behavior and you can adjust the distance of your steps or you can adjust your speed or you can adjust your posture. You're getting feedback on a moment to moment basis. There are essentially three components of any skill that involves motor movement. And those are,

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There is a practice that you can find interesting data for in the literature, which involves metronoming. So this you'll realize relates to generating repetitions. You can use a metronome to set the cadence of your repetitions. And if you do that, what athletes find is they can perform more repetitions. They can generate more output. You can increase speed.

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a number of really interesting things that are being done with auditory metronoming. There are actually some wild experiments out there. You know, there's a world championship of cup stacking. There's a young lady who I saw could take all these cups spread out on a table and basically just stack them into the perfect pyramid. And the least amount of times all the kids go wild.

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This is something I'd never thought to pursue and frankly never will pursue unless my life depends on it for some reason, but it's really impressive. And if you look at the sequence, because these have been recorded, you can look this up on YouTube.

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what you'll find is that these expert cup stackers, it's just all about error elimination, but there too, metronoming and auditory cues can actually cue them to pick up the cups faster than they would ordinarily and to learn to do that. Now, what's interesting about this and is cool is that your attention is now

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harnessed to the tone, to the metronome, not necessarily to what you're doing in terms of the motor movement. And so really you need a bit of proficiency. Again, this is for people who are intermediate or advanced, intermediate or advanced. But what you're essentially doing is you're creating an outside pressure, a contingency, so that you generate, again, more errors.

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So it's all about the errors that you get. And if you harness your attention to this outside contingency, this metronome that's firing off and saying, now, go, now, go, now, go.

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not only can you increase the number of repetitions, errors, and successes, but for some reason, and we don't know why, the regular cadence of the tone, of the metronome, and the fact that you are anchoring your movements to some external force, to some external pressure or cue, seems to accelerate the plasticity and the changes and the acquisition of skills beyond what it would be if you just did the same number of repetitions without that outside pressure.

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.

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I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.

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In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.

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So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.

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Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. Let's talk about visualization and mental rehearsal.

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sensory perception actually perceiving what you are doing and what's happening around you then there are the actual movements and then there's something called proprioception and proprioception is often discussed as kind of a sixth sense of knowing where your limbs are in relation to your body now skill learning has a lot of other dimensions too

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Been asked about this a lot and I think it relates back to that kind of a matrix Hollywood idea that we can just be embedded with a skill. But the question we're going to deal with today is, does it help? Does it let you learn things faster? And indeed the answer appears to be yes. However, despite what you've heard, it is not as good.

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It is not a total replacement for physical performance itself. Okay, so I'm going to be really concrete about this. I hear all the time that just imagining contracting a muscle can lead to the same gains as actually contracting that muscle. Just imagining a skill can lead to the same increases in performance as actually executing that skill. And that's simply not the case.

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However, it can supplement or support physical training and skill learning in ways that are quite powerful. Mental rehearsal, closing one's eyes typically, and thinking about a particular sequence of movement and visualizing it in one's quote unquote mind's eye creates activation of the upper motor neurons that's very similar, if not the same as the actual movement.

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And that makes sense because the upper motor neurons are all about the command for movement. They are not the ones that actually execute the movement, okay? Remember, upper motor neurons are the ones that generate the command for movement, not the actual movement. The ones that generate the actual movement are the lower motor neurons and the central pattern generators.

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So the point is, if you want to use visualization training, great, but forget the idea that visualization training is as good as the actual behavior. You hear this all the time. People say, do you know that if you imagine an experience to your brain and to your body, it's exactly the same as the actual experience? Absolutely not. This is not the way the nervous system works. I'm sorry.

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I don't mean to burst anybody's bubble, but your bubble is made of myths. And the fact of the matter is that the brain when it executes movement is generating proprioceptive feedback. And that proprioceptive feedback is critically involved in generating our sense of the experience and in things like learning. So I don't say this because I don't like the idea that visualization couldn't work.

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In fact, visualization does work, but it doesn't work as well. It doesn't create the same milieu, the same chemical milieu, the same environment as actual physically engaging in the behavior, the skill, the resistance training, et cetera. Many of you are probably asking, what can I take in order to accelerate skill learning? Well, the conditions are going to vary, but motivation is key.

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You have to show up to the training session motivated enough to focus your attention and to perform a lot of repetitions in the training sequence. That's just a prerequisite, right? There's no pill that's going to allow you to do fewer repetitions and extract more learning out of fewer repetitions. It's actually more a question of what are the conditions that you can create for yourself

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such that you can generate more repetitions per unit time. I think that's the right way to think about it. What are the conditions that you can create for yourself in your mind and in your body that are going to allow you to focus?

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There are a few compounds that I think are worth mentioning because of their ability to improve the actual physical performance, the actual execution of certain types of movements. And some of these have also been shown to improve cognitive function, especially in older populations. So I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention them. I'm only going to mention one today, in fact.

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The one that's particularly interesting and for which there really are a lot of data is alpha-GPC. And I'm going to attempt to pronounce what alpha-GPC actually is. It's alpha-glycerophosphocholine, right? Alpha-GPC, alpha-glycerophosphocholine. See, if I keep doing it over and over, repetitions, alpha-glycerophosphate choline. There, I made an error.

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But those are the main ones that we're going to focus on. So anytime we learn something, we have to decide, is it open loop or closed loop? The second question should be, what should I focus my attention on? Auditory attention, visual attention, or Should I focus on where my limbs are relative to my body or should I focus on the outcome? Okay, this is a critical distinction.

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Okay, so the point is that alpha-GPC, which is at least in the United States is sold over the counter, typically is taken in dosages of about 300 to 600 milligrams. That's a single dose or have been shown to do a number of things that for some of you might be beneficial. One is to enhance power output.

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So if you're engaging in something like resistance training or sprinting or something where you have to generate a lot of power, well then in theory, alpha GPC could be beneficial to you. A study noted a 14% increase in power output. That's pretty substantial, you know, 14%, if you think about it, but it wasn't like a doubling or something of that sort. So as you can see,

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Things like alpha GPC in particular, when they are combined with low levels of caffeine can have these effects of improving power output, can improve growth hormone release, can improve fat oxidation. All these things in theory can support skill learning, but what they're really doing is they're adjusting the foundation upon which you are going to execute these many, many repetitions, okay?

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The same thing would be said for caffeine itself. If that's something that motivates you and gets you out of a chair to actually do the physical training, then that's something that can perhaps improve or enhance the rate of skill learning and how well you retain those skills. Now on a previous episode, I talked about, and this was the episode on epinephrine, on adrenaline.

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I talked about how for mental, for cognitive learning, it makes sense to spike epinephrine, to bump epinephrine levels up, adrenaline levels up after cognitive learning. For physical learning, it appears to be the opposite. That if you are, if caffeine is in your practice, or if you decide to try alpha GPC, that you would want to do that before the training, take it before the training,

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Its effect should extend into the training, presumably throughout. A lot of the questions I get are about how different protocols and things that I described start to collide with one another. So let's say for instance, you go to bed at 1030 and you're going to do your skill training at 930.

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Well, taking a lot of caffeine then is not going to be a good idea because it's going to compromise your sleep. So I'm not here to design the perfect schedule for you because everyone's situations vary.

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So the things to optimize are repetitions, failures, more repetitions, more failures, at the offset of training, having some idle time that could be straight into sleep, or it could be simply letting the brain just go idle

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five to 10 minutes, not focusing on anything, not scrolling social media, not emailing, ideally not even talking to somebody, just lying down or sitting quietly with your eyes closed, letting those motor sequences replay. Use things like metronoming, where you're cuing your attention to some external cue

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some stimulus in this case, an auditory stimulus, most likely, and trying to generate more repetitions per unit time. So you now are armed with a lot of information about how you generate movement. And I like to think that you're also armed with a lot of information about how to design protocols that are optimized for you, or if you're a coach for your,

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for your trainees in order to optimize their learning of skills of various kinds. And I should say that for those of you that are short on time or have limited amounts of time, 10 minutes of maximum repetitions, maximum focus, skill learning work is going to be very beneficial. It's really about the density of training inside of a session.

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So I think you should work toward maximal or near maximal density of repetitions and failures, provided they're failures you can perform safely. in order to accelerate skill learning. And don't let some arbitrary, or in this case, the ultradian constraint prevent you from engaging in that practice. In other words, get the work in, get as much work done as you can per unit time.

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You can decide to learn how to do a golf swing or a dance tango and decide that you are going to focus on the

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And based on the science, based on things that I've seen, based on things that I'm now involved in with various communities, you will see the skill improve vastly at various stages. Sometimes it's a little bit stutter start. It's not always a linear improvement, but you will see incredible improvement in skill. Today we talked all about skill learning. I hope that you'll consider the information.

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You might even decide to try some of these tools. If you do, please let us know your results with them. Give us feedback in the comments. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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movements of your partner or the positions of your feet or maybe you're going to sense the position and posture of your body which is more proprioceptive okay so you have to allocate your attention and i'm going to tell you how to allocate your attention best in order to learn faster so these are the sorts of decisions that you have to make so we can really simplify things now i've given you a lot of information but we can simplify it basically open loop or closed loop that's one question and what am i going to focus on and then your neurology will take care of the rest

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about and focus on skill learning. We are going to focus on how to learn skills more quickly, in particular motor skills.

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

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In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

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pack so now I want to talk about realistic expectations somewhere in Hollywood presumably it got embedded in somebody's mind that instant skill acquisition was possible that you could take a particular pill and you would suddenly have a skill and I love movies but it simply doesn't exist Then the self-help literature created another rule called the 10,000 hours rule.

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And frankly, that doesn't really match the literature, at least the scientific literature either. I like it because it implies that learning takes time, but the 10,000 hours rule overlooks something crucial, which is that it's not about hours, it's about repetitions.

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Now, of course, there's a relationship between time and repetitions, but there are some beautiful experiments that point to the fact that by simple adjustment, of what you are focused on as you attempt to learn a new skill, you can adjust the number of repetitions that you do, you adjust your motivation for learning, and you can vastly accelerate learning.

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So if you're interested in how to perform better, whether or not it's dance or yoga, or even something that's just very repetitive like running or swimming, this podcast episode is for you.

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Some of you may recognize this by its internet name, which is not a scientific term, which is the Super Mario Effect. The Super Mario Effect relates to the game Super Mario Brothers, but you'll see why at the end.

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But basically what they did was they had 50,000 subjects, which is a enormous number of subjects, learn a program, essentially taking words from a computer program or the commands for a computer program that were kind of clustered in a column on the right,

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and those commands are essentially they essentially translate to things like you know go forward and then if it's a right hand turn in the maze then go right and continue until you hit a choice point etc so it's a bunch of instructions but the job of the subjects in these experiments were to organize those instructions in a particular way that would allow a little cursor to move through the maze successfully

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It takes some skill. You have to know what commands to give in what particular order. And they made that very easy. You could just assemble them in a list over onto the right. Now, there were two groups and some one half of the subjects, if they got it wrong, meaning they entered a command and the cursor would move and it was the wrong command for this little cursor to move through the maze.

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they saw a signal jump up on their screen that said, that did not work, please try again. The subjects would reorganize the instructions and then the little cursor would continue. And if they got it wrong again, it would say that did not work, please try again, okay? The other half of the subjects, if they got something wrong, were told, you just lost five points, please continue.

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So that's the only difference in the feedback that they got. Now I have to confess, I would have predicted based on my knowledge of dopamine circuitry and reward contingency, people will work much harder to prevent losing something than they will to gain something. And it turns out that that's not at all what happened.

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We're going to go deep into the science of skill learning, and we are going to talk about very specific protocols that the science points to and has verified allow you to learn more quickly, to embed that learning so that you remember it, and to be able to build up skills more quickly than you would otherwise. Let's talk about the acquisition of new skills.

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if they looked at the success rate of the subjects, what they found was that the subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, had a 68% success rate. 68% of them went on to successfully program this cursor moving through the maze. Whereas the ones that were told you lost five points had a 52% success rate, which is a significant difference.

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But the source of the success or the lack of success is really interesting. The subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, tried many, many more times per unit time. In other words, they made more attempts at programming this thing to allow this cursor to move through the maze. Whereas the people that were told you lost five points gave up earlier or gave up entirely.

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To me, this was very surprising. It violates a lot of things that I had heard in the kind of popular or the self-help literature that people will work much harder to avoid losing something than they will to gain something. But it did fit well with another set of experiments that I'm very familiar with from the neuroscience literature.

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So the experiment that I want to tell you about is called the tube test. Here's the experiment. You take two rats, you put them in a tube, or two mice, you put them in a tube. And mice and rats, they don't like to share the same tube. So what they'll do is they'll start pushing each other back and forth, back and forth. Sooner or later, one of the rats or mice pushes the other one out.

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Now you take the winner, you give it a new competitor, and what you find is that the mouse or rat that won previously has a much higher than chance probability of winning the second time. In other words, winning before leads to winning again. Three years ago, there was a paper published that examined the brain area that's involved in this.

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Turns out it's a particular area of the frontal cortex, for those of you that want to know. And they did a simple experiment where the experimenters increased or decreased the activity of this brain area in the prefrontal cortex, a little sub region of the prefrontal cortex. And what they found is if they stimulated this brain area,

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a mouse or rat, regardless of whether or not it had been a winner or loser before, became a winner every single time. So what is this magic brain area? What is it doing? Well, the reason I'm bringing this up today and the reason I'm bringing it up on the heels of the Super Mario effect is that stimulation of this brain area had a very simple,

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and very important effect, which was it led to more forward steps, more repetitions, more effort, but not in terms of sheer might and will, not digging deeper, just more repetitions per unit time. And the losers had fewer repetitions per unit time.

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So the Super Mario Effect, this online experiment, and the tube test, which has been done by various labs and repeated again and again, point to a simple but very important rule, which is neither the 10,000 hours rule nor the magic wand Hollywood version of learning.

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but rather the neurobiological explanation for learning a skill is you want to perform as many repetitions per unit time as you possibly can, at least when you're first trying to learn a skill. The winners are always generating more repetitions per unit time. It's just a repeat of performance, repeat of performance, even if there are errors. And that points to something vitally important, which is

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These could be skills such as a golf swing or a tennis swing, or you're shooting free throws, or you're learning to dance, or you're learning an instrument. I'm mainly going to focus on athletic performance. There are basically two types of skills, open loop and closed loop.

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Reps are important, but making error reps is also important. In fact, it might be the most important factor. So let's talk about errors and why those solve the problem of what to focus on. Because as I said earlier, if you want to learn something, you need to know if it's open loop or closed loop, and you need to know what to focus on, where to place your perception.

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And that seems like a tough task, but errors will tell you exactly what to focus on. And the reason is that the errors actually cue your nervous system to two things. One, to error correction, And the other is it opens the door or the window for neuroplasticity. Errors tell your nervous system that something needs to change.

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So if you are performing a task or a skill, like you're learning how to dance and you're stepping on the other person's toes or you're fumbling or you're not getting it right, those errors are opening the possibility for plasticity. If you walk away at that point, you've made the exact wrong choice. Without errors, the brain is not in a position to change itself.

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Errors actually cue the frontal cortex networks, what we call top-down processing, and the neuromodulators, things like dopamine and acetylcholine and epinephrine, that will allow for plasticity. So these... cue the brain that something was wrong and they open up the possibility for plasticity. It's what's sometimes called the framing effect. It frames what's important, right?

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This isn't about motivation to learn. This is about how you actually learn. So the key is designate a particular block of time that you are going to perform repetitions. Work for time and then try and perform the maximum number of repetitions that you can do safely That's going to be the best way to approach learning for most sessions.

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I will talk about other things that one can do, but making errors is key. And this isn't a motivational speech. I'm not saying, oh, go make errors. Errors are good for you. You have to fail in order to win. No, you have to fail in order to open up the possibility of plasticity, but you have to fail many times within the same session.

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And those failures will cue your attention to the appropriate sensory events. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.

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As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.

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I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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So science points to the fact that there's a particular sequencing of learning sessions that will allow you to learn faster and to retain the skill learning. And it involves doing exactly as I just described, which is getting as many repetitions as you can in the learning session, paying attention to the errors that you make,

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And then the rewards that will be generated, again, these are neurochemical rewards, from the successful performance of a movement. And then after the session, you need to do something very specific, which is nothing. That's right. After a skill learning session, there's a replay of the motor sequence that you performed correctly

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Open loop skills are skills where you perform some sort of motor action and then you wait and you get immediate feedback as to whether or not it was done correctly or not. A good example would be throwing darts at a dart board. So if you throw the dart, you get feedback about whether or not you hit the bullseye, that's open loop. Closed loop would be something that's more continuous.

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And there's an elimination of the motor sequences that you performed incorrectly, okay?

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So to be very clear about this, after I finished the training session, if I do nothing, if I just sit there and close my eyes for five to 10 minutes, even one minute, the brain starts to replay the motor sequence in a way that appears important for the more rapid consolidation of the motor sequence of the pattern. and to accelerated learning.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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and fatty acids in those foods as accurately, you've actually done structural damage at a micro level, but structural damage, excuse me, to the mucosal lining of the gut. Now this can all be repaired if you stay away from highly processed foods for some period of time, but the negative effects of these emulsifiers are quite real. So to make it really clean and simple,

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Emulsifiers from highly processed foods are limiting your guts ability to detect what's in the foods you eat and therefore to deploy the satiety signals, the signals that shut down hunger.

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In addition to that, there's a parallel mechanism at play that I talked about in a previous episode, but I'll remind you again that you have neurons in your gut that are sensing sugar and are sending a subconscious signal up to the brain via the vagus nerve. And those neurons trigger the release of dopamine, which makes you crave more of that food.

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So now you've got parallel signals making you want to eat more sugar, making you unaware of how much sugar you've eaten and that are disrupting the inputs to the nervous system that signal to the rest of your brain and body that you've obtained enough fatty acids and you've obtained enough amino acids. So these highly processed foods are really terrible.

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And I'm not out here to say, never enjoy a processed food of any kind. I'd be a hypocrite because I do eat processed foods from time to time. Although the ones that I tend to eat, I try and make of the healthier variety. But eating whole foods has tremendous value and eating highly processed food has tremendous negative impact on the gut and on the gut brain axis.

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The bottom line is that highly processed foods are just bad for you. They increase weight gain. They disrupt the lining of your gut in a way that disrupts things like CCK and proper satiety signals. So there's just so many reasons why these highly processed foods are terrible.

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And they can explain a lot of the ill health effects that we've seen in the last 50 years, not just in the United States, but all over the world. The enormous increase in diabetes, juvenile diabetes. It's just remarkable how far down the path of bad we've gone. And it's clear, it's almost a smoking gun what the cause of this is.

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If you'd like to learn more about that, please refer to the Lustig lecture. He also spells out why non-processed foods is far more economical in terms of just at the level of the household or individual, as well as at the societal level. Really interesting stuff. I highly recommend you check it out. So now let's move on to some other hormones that regulate hunger and satiety.

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in particular insulin. Now you've probably heard of insulin before. Insulin is the thing that's lacking in type one diabetics. That's why they have to inject insulin whenever they eat. The reason they have to do that is because when they eat, their foods are broken down into glucose.

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And in order to shuttle glucose to the appropriate tissues in the body, and also to keep glucose levels in check, you need insulin. So the simplest way to think about insulin and glucose is that when you eat, that food is broken down into sugars. That's true whether or not it's fats or it's sugars, or eventually if it's proteins, they are oxidized into fuels, as we say.

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It turns out that there are multiple populations of neurons in there. Some are promoting feeding and some are promoting not feeding or not eating. Now, the other neural component of all this that you need to know about actually has to do with your mouth. So there's an area of your cortex, so that's a little bit further up in your brain called the insular cortex.

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Your blood sugar needs to be kept in a particular range. Hypoglycemic means too low, hyperglycemic means too high, and what they called euglycemic, E-U glycemic, is the healthy range. Now, what those healthy ranges are, in general, the healthy range, the euglycemic range is about 70 to 100 nanograms per deciliter. Why is it important that glucose be kept at a particular level?

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Once you understand that, keeping glucose in check starts to have a rationale behind it, and the ways to do that start to make a lot more sense. So the reason is, If glucose levels get too high because of the way that our cells, in particular neurons, interact with glucose, high levels of glucose can damage neurons. It can actually kill them.

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You can start getting what are called peripheral, excuse me, neuropathies. One of the symptoms of some forms of diabetes is that people start losing the sensation of touch in their fingers or their hands or their feet, and they can start going blind. There's diabetic retinopathies. So it's very important that insulin manage your glucose levels.

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Now there's also type two diabetes where there's insulin secreted from the pancreas, but people are insulin insensitive. There's a disruption in the receptors and insulin insensitivity isn't quite the same as having no insulin at all, but it parallels some of the same mechanisms. Now type one diabetes is often picked up because someone has a sudden,

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because they're not processing blood sugar the same way they were before. Type 2 diabetes is often, although not always, associated with being overweight and with obesity. Both of them are challenging conditions. Type 2 diabetes almost always can be managed by managing one's weight. And of course there are prescription drugs and supplements that can help manage those.

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We're going to talk about all of that. But for most people that don't have diabetes, the important thing is to manage glucose, to keep it in that euglycemic range. And there are a number of different ways to do that. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are diet-based, and some of them are based on supplements or prescription drugs. So let's talk about those now.

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.

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I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.

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And it processes a lot of different kinds of information, mostly information about what's going on inside you, so-called interoception. The insular cortex has neurons that get input from your mouth, from the touch receptors in your mouth.

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In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.

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So I add hot water and sip on that thing and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.

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Essentials: How to Control Hunger, Eating & Satiety

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Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. So if you eat, and in particular, if you eat carbohydrates, blood glucose goes up.

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If you eat fats, blood glucose goes up to a far less degree. And if you eat proteins, depending on the protein, it'll eventually be broken down for fuel or assembled into amino acid chains for protein synthesis and repair of other tissues and bodily functions. glucose goes up and then is kept in range. When you are hungry, you secrete a different hormone and that's called glucagon.

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And glucagon's main role is to pull stores of energy out of the liver and the muscles. And once those are depleted, you'll eventually tap into body fat. So the two kind of push and pull systems that we're going to think about now to keep this simple is that you have the insulin system managing glucose

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and you've got the glucagon system pulling energy out of your liver and muscles for immediate fuel. And eventually you'll pull fuel out of body fat if you've been active for a very long time and all your glycogen stores are depleted or close to depleted. So what does this all mean? Let's say you had a meal and that meal consisted of rice, a carbohydrate,

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some meat or fish, let's say a piece of salmon, and some vegetable, some fibrous vegetable like asparagus or cabbage or something like that. If you were to eat all of that at once, you take a bite of one, a bite of the other, you mix it up, then you will experience an increase in insulin, an increase in blood glucose that's moderately fast. It's going to increase pretty quickly.

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An insular cortex has powerful control over whether or not you are enjoying what you're eating, whether or not you want to avoid what you're eating, whether or not you've had enough or whether or not you want to continue eating more. And that has to do, believe it or not, with the touch or sensation of eating.

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What's remarkable is that the order that you consume each macronutrient has a pretty profound influence on the rate of insulin and glucose secretion into the blood and how quickly those levels rise. If you were to eat the fibrous thing first, so a lot of chewing, but not a big rise in blood glucose, that will actually blunt the release of glucose until you eat the fish and the rice.

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But believe it or not, it will actually blunt the glucose increase that the rice would cause. Now, I'm not talking about neurotically eating each macronutrient separately in sequence. I'm just trying to give you a picture of what's happening ordinarily. So what does this all mean?

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It means that if you want a steep increase in glucose, you are very, very hungry, then you should eat the carbohydrate-laden food first, or you should eat a bunch of macronutrients combined. So that would be like the hamburger or the sandwich, the bread, whatever's in that sandwich all together. Usually that's protein and vegetables as well.

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if you want to have a kind of more modest increase in glucose, or you want to blunt the increase in glucose, then have the, at least some of the fibrous thing first, and then the protein, and then the carbohydrate, you will notice that your blood glucose will rise more steadily. and that you'll achieve satiety earlier in the meal.

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Basically what you're trying to avoid are steep increases in blood sugar. And the order that you eat foods has an enormous impact on that. The other thing that has an enormous impact on how long and shallow or how steep that curve of glucose is, depends on whether or not you recently were moving, are moving, or start moving after you eat.

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So it turns out that your blood glucose levels can be modulated very, very powerfully by movement. If you did any kind of intense exercise or even just walking or jogging or cycling, anything before you eat, your blood glucose levels will be dampened somewhat. And even just moving after a meal, even just a calm, easy walk can really adjust the ways for the better.

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The other thing I'd like to address for a moment is this notion of stable blood sugar versus labile blood sugar or unstable blood sugar. Some people just have stable blood sugar. They can go long periods of time without eating and feel fine. Other people get really shaky, really jittery and or when they do eat, they feel really keyed up.

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Sometimes they'll even sweat, but whether or not your blood sugar is all over the place or whether or not stable, can be impacted by a number of things. One of those things is exercise.

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But the key point right now is to know that you've got these two brain areas, the ventromedial hypothalamus, that's involved in hunger and lack of hunger. And you have this insular cortex that gets input from your mouth and cares about chewing and the consistency of foods and all sorts of interesting things that are just very tactile.

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So these days there's a lot of interest in what they call zone two cardio, which is that kind of steady state cardio where you can just nasal breathe, even at pretty high output, where you could maybe have a conversation. Zone two cardio that last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or sometimes more for you endurance athletes can create positive effects on blood sugar regulation such that

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people can sit down and enjoy whatever it is, the hot fudge sundae or whatever the high sugar content food is, and blood glucose management is so good, your insulin sensitivity is so high, which is a good thing, that you can manage that blood glucose to the point where It doesn't really make you shaky. It doesn't disrupt you.

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Basically doing zone two cardio for 30 to 60 minutes, three to four times a week makes your blood sugar really stable. And that's an attractive thing for a variety of reasons. On the flip side, high intensity interval training or resistance training, AKA weight training, are very good at stimulating the various molecules that promote repackaging of glycogen.

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So sprints, heavy weightlifting, circuit type weightlifting, provided there's some reasonable degree of resistance, those are going to trigger all sorts of mechanisms that are going to to shuttle glucose back into glycogen, convert into glycogen into muscle tissue, restock the liver, et cetera.

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And I should mention that one of the advantages of high intensity interval training or weightlifting of various kinds is that it also, it causes long standing increases in basal metabolic rate. Now I'd like to turn to prescription drugs that regulate the hormone systems, controlling feeding and satiety.

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There's a prescription drug, metformin, which was developed as a treatment for diabetes, and it works potently to reduce blood glucose. It has dramatic effects in lowering blood glucose. Metformin involves... changes to mitochondrial action in the liver. That's its main way of depleting or reducing blood glucose.

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And it does so through the so-called AMPK pathway, and it increases insulin sensitivity overall. Metformin is a powerful drug. In fact, I'm surprised that so many people have sought it out, given that most of the people that I'm aware of that sought it out are not diabetic. I do want to mention, because I'm sure some of you out there are curious about the ketogenic diet.

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I'm going to do an entire episode about ketosis and the brain and the body, but the ketogenic diet has been shown in 22 studies to have a notable decrease on blood glucose. And that is not surprising because you're the ketogenic of the ketogenic diet is that you're consuming very little or zero of the foods that promote big spikes in insulin and glucose.

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And I think most people think about the touch receptors on, excuse me, the taste receptors on the tongue, but we often don't think about the touch or tactile essence of food. Now let's get back to the ventromedial hypothalamus. Sometimes it makes animals or people want to eat more, sometimes less. So what's going on there?

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If you consume enough protein, some of that protein can be converted into glucose, of course, through gluconeogenesis. But the ketogenic diet has very strong support for its role in regulating blood sugar, which is glucose. But the specific effects of the ketogenic diet

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And one particular effect that I'll address later, but I'll mention now, which is the ability of the ketogenic diet to adjust thyroid hormone levels in ways that make it such that if you return to eating carbohydrates after being in ketosis for too long, you don't manage thyroid and carbohydrates as well. That has been shown as well. So we're going to dive deep into ketosis in a future episode.

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So for you ketonistas out there, don't worry. I certainly have nothing against ketogenic diet. I actually don't have anything for or against any particular nutrition plan. I know what works for me, at least at this stage of my life, and I'll update it if I need to.

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I'm simply trying to get you as much information as I possibly can so that you can navigate through that landscape in a way that's in keeping with your particular goals. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.

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It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

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So now you understand a lot about blood sugar and how it's managed and the ways that you can manage it better depending on your particular needs. This is also a good opportunity for us to look back at some of the medical literature because it really points to just how far we've come in terms of understanding these important mechanisms.

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There's a classic experiment that was done in which researchers took two rats and so-called parabios to them to each other.

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And it points us in the direction of some actionable protocols. So diabetes, which is these huge increases in blood glucose because there's no insulin was known about as early as 1500 BC, which is just incredible.

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And the way physicians then understood that certain people had high blood glucose without actually knowing what blood glucose was, is that they would take the urine of particular patients and they'd find that ants preferably move toward and consume the urine of certain patients and not others.

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And they understood that there was something in that urine that was correlated with a sudden weight loss and some of the other probably very unfortunate health symptoms that these people were experiencing. So they knew that there was something in blood and urine. Now this business of measuring blood sugar

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from the urine has been something that lasted way beyond these early stages of, you know, 1500 BC. Turns out that as late as 1674, Physicians at Oxford University were figuring out who had pathologically high levels of blood glucose by analyzing their urine.

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What that meant is that they did a little surgery and they linked their blood supply so that they were forever physically linked to one another and could exchange factors in the blood, but their brains were separate, their mouths were separate, and they essentially did everything separately, except that they were linked to one another.

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And again, they were measuring the sweetness of their urine, but, and this is medical fact, they would do this by taking urine samples from different patients and tasting them And they developed an intuitive sense of what excessively sweet urine was relative to the other urines that they had tasted.

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about how hormones impact feeding and hunger, as well as satiety, the feeling that you don't want to eat or that you've eaten enough. Now it's important to understand that hormones don't work alone in this context.

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So for those of you that are in the medical profession or those of you that are seeking out the medical profession, do understand this is not done anymore.

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And you can also just reflect on how far we've come in terms of the medical profession itself in our ability to measure things from the blood and measure things from urine without having to ask ants which urine is sweeter or ask oneself which urine is sweeter. So indeed we are making progress as a species.

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Before we close out today, I want to talk about one more tool that many of you will probably find useful. I certainly have. I'm a big consumer of caffeine, although I don't consume a ton of it, I consume it very consistently. So I'm big on consuming mate, which is a strong caffeinated tea, and I generally do that early in the day.

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although I do delay about two hours after I wake up for reasons I've talked about in previous episode to maintain that nice arc of alertness and focus. Mate, also called yerba mate, is an interesting compound because unlike coffee, it has been shown to increase something called glucagon-like peptide, GLP-1. and increase leptin levels. Now we didn't talk a lot about glucagon today.

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Glucagon is really elevated in the fasting state. I mentioned that it's sort of the opposite of insulin in kind of rough terms. That's one way to think about it. But GLP-1 or glucagon-like peptide one is increased by ingesting mate and it acts as a pretty nice appetite suppressant. Now I'm not trying to suppress my appetite.

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I like to eat, as I mentioned before, but it works really well to stimulate the brain and to give you a level of alertness and to do a lot of the things that coffee does. It also contains electrolytes. We, meaning our neurons and our brain, run on a variety of factors, electrical activity and chemical transmission, et cetera, but they require adequate levels of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

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So they had to walk together and go to the same places in order to do it. This parabiosis experiment revealed something really important. When they lesioned the ventromedial hypothalamus in one of the rats that was connected to the other rat, that rat got very, very fat. It's just really obese. The other one, however, got very thin. It actually lost weight. So what does this tell us?

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Actually, if you were to learn the biology or the physiology of the action potential, the firing of a neuron, something we teach every first year neuroscience student, and I'd be happy to teach you if you're interested, you'll hear about sodium rushing into cells and potassium entering and leaving cells in order to allow neurons to communicate.

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Electrolytes are critically important for the function of the nervous system. And many things that act as diuretics that promote excretion of water like caffeine can also take electrolytes out along with in particular sodium. And sometimes the lightheadedness or the brain fog that people experience isn't just because electrolytes are low, but because they're kind of out of balance.

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So I like mate because it has electrolytes, it has caffeine, it stimulates the release of this glucagon-like peptide, GLP-1, and it's been a big help to me in extending that early morning fasting window out to about noon or so when I eat my first meal. It also just tastes really good. And the fact that glucagon-like peptide one is enriched or is released more when you drink mate.

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And the fact that GLP-1 can regulate blood sugar in ways that keep your blood sugar in that we called euglycemic, not too high, not too low mode is one reason why ingesting mate is attractive to me. So Yerba Mate GLP-1 can manage in healthy ways, leptin levels, glucose levels, and glucagon levels in ways that if it serves you, you might want to try.

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So once again, we covered an enormous amount of material focused on how hormones regulate feeding, hunger, and when one feels they don't need to eat, so-called satiety, that you've had enough. We've just focused today mainly on things like ghrelin, on things like melanocyte-simulating hormone, incredible, powerful hormone that can suppress appetite,

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on things like cholecystokinin that comes from the gut and can suppress appetite, on things like food emulsifiers, on the fact that when you're eating, you are amino acid seeking, even though you might not realize it, that you are also seeking out particular fatty acids. So I've tried to give you a number of actionable tools

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Again, always do what's best for your health and do that in company with a healthcare professional. I'm not a physician. I don't prescribe anything. I'm a professor. I profess a lot of things. If you know anyone that's interested in this topic or you think that someone could benefit from it, please suggest the podcast to them as well. And most of all, thank you for your interest in science.

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This tells us that there's something in the blood that's being exchanged between the two animals because it was their blood supply that was linked. And that tells us that there's hormone or endocrine signals that are involved in the desire to eat and hunger and appetite. And so next we're going to talk about what those endocrine signals are.

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And then I'm going to immediately point to some entry points that you can use. And you can use these even if you're not parabiosed to anything. and that can allow you to time your meal frequency and predict when you're going to be hungry or not. So let's talk about the endocrine factors that regulate feeding hunger and satiety. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David.

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David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one. And I also like the cake flavored one.

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Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.

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With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.

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I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.

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One of the really exciting things to emerge in the science of feeding and appetite in the last 20 years is the discovery of another brain area, not just the ventromedial hypothalamus, but it's an area of the brain called the arcuate nucleus. And the arcuate nucleus has some really fascinating sets of neurons that release even more incredible molecules and chemicals into the blood.

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And these chemicals act as accelerators on feeding an appetite or breaks. So first of all, there are a set of neurons in this arcuate nucleus. It's the pro-opio-melanocortin system. Now, the POMC neurons make something called alpha-MSH. melanocyte stimulating hormone, alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone. MSH reduces appetite and it's a powerful molecule, all right?

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So just put that on the shelf, MSH reduces appetite. Now there's another population of neurons in the arcuate nucleus called the AGRP neurons. The AGRP neurons, The activity in these AGRP neurons goes way up when animals or people haven't eaten for a while. And the activity of MSH, the release of MSH goes up when we've eaten. Next, let's talk about a hormone peptide that activates hunger.

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Today I'm going to describe some hormones that have powerful effects on whether or not you want to eat more or less or stop eating altogether. But they don't do that on their own, they do that in cooperation with the nervous system.

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And this is a really interesting one because it relates to when you get hungry, in addition to the fact that you get hungry at all. and it's called ghrelin. It's spelled G-H-R-E-L-I-N. Ghrelin is released actually from the GI tract. And its main role is to increase your desire to eat. And it does that through a variety of mechanisms.

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Part of that is to stimulate some of the brain areas, the actual neurons that make you want to eat. In addition, it creates food anticipatory signals within your nervous system. So you start thinking about the things that you happen to like to eat at that particular time of day. And this is fascinating. Ghrelin is sort of like a clock

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a hormonal clock that makes you want to eat at particular times. Now the signal for ghrelin is reduced glucose levels in the blood. If it drops too low, ghrelin is secreted from your gut. It activates neurons in your brain at various locations. And we all know about the famous Pavlovian

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of Pavlov's dogs, you know, they start salivating to the bell after the bell was presented with food, you remove the food and then just the bell can stimulate the salivation. We become Pavlovian at times, but rarely is it ever discussed what the neural pathways for that are.

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And it turns out that these hormones that are secreted from the gut can stimulate the neurons to create a sensation and a desire for certain foods at certain times of day. You've done this experiment. If you are somebody who eats breakfast at more or less the same time each day, let's say 8 a.m., your ghrelin secretion will start to match when you typically eat.

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And it's able to override the low levels of glucose in your bloodstream because the ghrelin system also gets input from a clock in your liver that is linked to the clock in your hypothalamus in your brain. And what this means is if you eat at regular meal times, you will start to get hungry a few minutes before those meals times.

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The first thing that you need to know about the nervous system side, the neural control over feeding and hunger, is that there's an area of your brain called the hypothalamus. Now the hypothalamus contains lots of different kinds of neurons doing lots of different kinds of things. There's a particular area of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus.

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If you've ever wondered why your stomach kind of starts to growl because it's a particular time of day and you're like, oh, I must want to eat. Well, that's ghrelin. So ghrelin is secreted as a kind of food anticipatory signal to get you motivated to go eat at regular times.

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But what that means is that if you suddenly go from eating on a very regular schedule to skipping a meal or pushing your meal timing out or shifting at all, you're going to have ghrelin in your system, and that ghrelin is going to stimulate the desire to eat by acting at the level of your brain. So ghrelin stimulates the AGRP neurons, which makes you want to eat.

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Regularity of eating equals regularity of ghrelin secretion equals regularity of activity of these AGRP neurons, meaning you will be hungry at very regular intervals. So if MSH inhibits feeding, makes us want to eat less, and ghrelin makes us want to eat more, There's another hormone called CCK, cholecystokinin, that is potent in reducing our levels of hunger.

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Now, CCK is in the GI tract, it's released from the GI tract, and its release is governed by two things. One is a subset of very specialized neurons that detect what's in the gut, the specific contents of the gut. and by certain elements of the mucosa, of the mucus lining of the gut and the gut microbiome.

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So what's really interesting is that CCK is stimulated by fatty acids, amino acids, and particular amino acids that we'll talk about as well as by sugar. So which fatty acids in the gut stimulate the release of CCK? Omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, CLA, either from food or from supplements, stimulate the release of CCK, which then reduces or at least blunts appetite.

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The other thing that stimulates CCK that I mentioned are amino acids. So when we eat, we have the ability to break down different macronutrients, you know, carbohydrates, or proteins into sugars and glucose that then we can convert to ATP and all that stuff from the Krebs cycle from high school. We're not going to go into that today. That's for a future episode.

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Amino acids both can be used as energy through a process called gluconeogenesis of converting proteins into energy, or those amino acids can be broken down and then rebuilt into things like repairing muscle tissue, as well as other forms of cellular repair. They're involved in all sorts of things related to protein synthesis. What does this mean?

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If we eat the proper amino acids at the proper levels, if we ingest omega-3s and CLAs, conjugated linoleic acids at the proper levels, or get them from supplements, there is a blunting of appetite. Appetite is kept clamped and we don't become hyperphagic. We don't overeat. We tend to eat within healthy or normal ranges.

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And it's one that researchers have been interested for a long time now in terms of its relationship to hunger and feeding. And the reason is it creates these paradoxical effects. What do I mean by that? What they found was that sometimes lesioning or disrupting the neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus would make animals or people hyperphagic. They would want to eat like crazy.

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So this is very important because most people don't understand that when we're eating, we are basically fat foraging and amino acid foraging. In other words, even if it's not conscious, we are eating until we trigger the activation of CCK. Now, there are other reasons why we shut down eating too. The volume of food in our gut can be large and we can feel very distended.

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That's the physical reason, obviously. But At a subconscious level, the gut is informing the brain via CCK and other mechanisms when we've ingested enough of what we need. So as you can see, feeding is an interplay between brain and body, and it's some of the micronutrients and even the breakdown of particular nutrients that's putting the accelerator or the brake on the feeding process.

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You are essentially trying to eat to get these nutrients, and then a signal can be deployed up to your brain that you're not really interested in eating that much more. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.

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As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.

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I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. There's one particular aspect of food that can powerfully impact CCK.

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And I think most people, I'm guessing 99.9% of people out there are not aware of this. and it has to do with highly processed foods. There's a lot of reasons why one would want to avoid highly processed foods.

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In fact, if you're interested in that topic and the history of whole foods transitioning to highly processed foods in this country, I highly recommend you listen to a YouTube video by Dr. Robert Lustig. He's at University of California, San Francisco.

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It gives a beautiful description of the history of this and why the food industry started packing in additional sugars and salts and turning foods into commodities. It's really fascinating. It has no conspiracy theory, it's just all scientific facts. It's really a wonderful lecture. It has millions of views, should be very easy to find.

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There's another reason to avoid highly processed foods, however, and that has to do with what's called emulsifiers. Now, many of you are familiar with emulsifiers, even though you don't know it. When you put detergent in the laundry, that contains emulsifiers.

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The goal of that detergent is to bring together fatty molecules with water molecules and be able to dissociate them and break them up to get the stains out of clothes and things of that sort. there are a lot of emulsifiers put into processed foods. And those emulsifiers allow certain chemical reactions to occur that extends the shelf life of those foods. Why are emulsifiers bad?

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Okay, there are a lot of reasons why they're bad, but the reason why they're bad for the mechanisms that we've been talking about today is that when you ingest those foods,

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And other lesions in other individuals or animals would make them anorexic, would make them not want to eat at all. It would make food aversive. So that means that the ventromedial hypothalamus is definitely an interesting control station for hunger and feeding and satiety, but it doesn't really tell you what's going on at a deeper level. In fact, it's a little bit confusing or paradoxical.

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you're bringing those emulsifiers into your gut and those emulsifiers strip away the mucosal lining of the gut and they actually cause the neurons that innervate the gut that extend those little processes we call axons into the gut to retract deeper into the gut. And as a consequence, you're ingesting a bunch of food and the signals like CCK never get deployed.

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The signals that actually shut down hunger are never actually triggered. And so as a consequence, you want to eat far more of these highly processed foods. In addition, if you then go from eating a highly processed food to non-highly processed foods, you're not able to measure the amounts of amino acid sugars

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Not everyone responds well to them, as I'm sure you've all heard, and their side effect profile has effects like blunting affect. It can make people feel kind of flat, kind of meh. Many people adjust their serotonin by just eating more food, and carbohydrate-rich foods will increase serotonin.

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I eat a relatively high protein and moderate fat, zero carb or low carb meal at lunch and in the afternoon to stay alert because those foods tend to favor dopamine production, acetylcholine production, epinephrine production, and alertness. My mood is generally pretty good most of the time. And then as evening comes around and I'm concerned about sleep and a good night's sleep,

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or we smell something or we taste something that we like, there does tend to be a postural leaning in. We tend to inhale air at that time. We tend to bring in more of whatever chemical substance is there. So we tend to do these mm's and kind of lean in closer to things that are attractive to us. And when we see and experience things that we don't like, Sometimes it's a mild aversion.

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not concerned in an anxious way, but I want to get a good night's sleep, I will ingest foods that promote serotonin release because they contain a lot of tryptophan. So as you're seeing, this isn't really a discussion about nutrition per se.

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This is a discussion about food, which contains amino acids, amino acids being the precursors to neuromodulators and neuromodulators having a profound effect on your overall state of alertness or calmness, happiness, sadness, and wellbeing. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.

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AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.

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The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong.

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But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.

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I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

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For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Now you understand the relationship, I hope, between foods and dopamine, foods and serotonin, and that they're both being communicated to the brain via the vagus, right?

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So let's talk a little bit more about things that we ingest in our body and then allow our body to inform our brain to shift our mood. But I don't think most people know this simple fact, which is that the omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio has a profound effect on depression. First of all, in an experiment done in animals, they found there's a model of learned helplessness in animals.

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It's not very kind to the animals, but they put rats or mice in a jar, they let them swim, and they'll swim, swim, swim to try and save their life, and eventually they give up. It's a learned helplessness. They don't let them drown, they take them out. adjusting the omega-3, omega-6 ratio so that the omega-3s are higher led to less learned helplessness, meaning these animals would swim longer.

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But that same study was essentially done in humans. What they did is they took people who were clinically depressed, major depression, okay? Major depression is severe maladaptive state, meaning it inhibits job, relationships, appetite, all sorts of negative health effects. And they did a comparison of a thousand milligrams a day of EPA.

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So EPA is one of the elements that contains high levels of omega-3s that's in things like fish oil, but it wasn't a thousand milligrams of fish oil. It was a thousand milligrams of EPA. compared that to 20 milligrams of fluoxetine, which is Prozac, they found that they were equally effective in reducing depressive symptoms. And what was really interesting

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in addition to that is that the combination of a thousand milligrams of EPA and fluoxetine had a synergistic effect in lowering depressive symptoms. And now there are lots of studies. If you go into PubMed and you were to put EPA or fish oil and depression, you would find that there were a number of really impressive results showing that it's at least as effective as certain

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We just kind of lean back or look away. Other times it's an intense aversion of disgust and we tend to cringe our face. We tend to avoid inhaling any of the chemicals. This probably has roots in ancient biological mechanisms that are to prevent us from ingesting things that are bad for us, chemical compounds and tastes that might be poisonous.

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antidepressants at these dosages, and it can amplify or improve the effect of low dosages of some of these SSRIs. You can discuss it with your doctor and family and make the choices that are right for you. Now, of course, I really want to emphasize something, which is that no one compound

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or nutrient or supplement or drug or behavior for that matter is going to be the be all end all of shifting out of depression or improving one's mood or improving sleep.

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You cannot expect to take a compound regardless of source or potency and have it completely shift your experience of life without having to continue to engage in the proper behaviors, all the things we know, proper sleep, exercise, social connection, food, et cetera.

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Okay, so now let's turn to another aspect of the gut-brain relationship that will surprise you, in some cases might shock you, and that has some really cool and actionable biology. And that's the gut microbiome, probiotics, and prebiotics. So what's the deal with the gut microbiome and the gut-brain axis?

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Today, we've actually been talking a lot already about the gut brain axis that has nothing to do with microbiomes. We've been talking about this vagus nerve that connects providing sensory information from the body to the brain, and then the brain also sends in the same nerve motor information to control the motility, the gut, the heart rate, how fast we breathe and deployment of immune stuff.

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But oftentimes when we hear about the gut brain axis these days, it's a discussion about the gut microbiome. I'm very happy there's so much discussion about the gut microbiome. I am somewhat dismayed and concerned that most of what I hear out there is either false or partially false.

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So we're going to clear up some of the misconceptions, first by understanding the biology, and then we're going to talk about some of the actionable items. It is true that we have a lot of these little microorganisms living in our gut. They're not there because they want to help us. They don't have brains.

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They are adaptive, however, they try and find and create environments that make it easier for them to proliferate. So they don't care about you and me, but they are perfectly willing to exploit you and me in order to make more of themselves. The microbiota that live in us vary along the length of our digestive tract. So we are one long tube for digestion.

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And inside of that tube is a mucosal lining. And the conditions of that mucosal lining set a number of different things. It sets the rate of our digestion and the quality of our digestion. it sets, for instance, our immune system. We're ingesting things all the time. Think about air, bacteria, viruses, they're making their way into our gut. And some of those bacteria live in the gut.

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So much of the foundation of any discussion about emotion has to center around this kind of push pull of attraction to things or aversion from things. Now that's a very basic way of thinking about emotions. But if you think about it, it works for a lot of different circumstances.

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And some of those bacteria bias the mucosal lining in the gut, stomach and intestines, to be more acidic or more basic so that they can make more of themselves, so they can replicate. Now, some of those mucosal linings that they promote make us feel better. They make us feel more alert. They bolster our immune system and others make us feel worse. So first rule, The microbiome isn't good or bad.

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Some of these little bugs that live in us do bad things to us. They make us feel worse. They lower our immunity. They affect us in negative ways. Some of them make us feel better. And they do that mainly by changing the conditions of our gut environment. In addition to that, they do impact

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the neurotransmitters and the neurons that live in the gut and that signal up to the brain to impact things like dopamine and serotonin that we've been talking about previously. So there's a vast world now devoted to trying to understand what sources of food, what kinds of foods are good or not good for the gut microbiome. Here's a few things that I think you might find surprising.

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First of all, supporting a healthy gut microbiome is good for mood, great for digestion, and great for immune system function. However, that does not mean maxing out or taking the most probiotic and prebiotic that you can possibly manage. As I mentioned many times before, I do believe in probiotics.

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I take probiotics, but there are studies that show that if you take lots and lots of certain probiotics like lactobacillus and you really ramp up the levels more, it is not a case of more is better. There are things like brain fog that can come from that. Brain fog is just this inability to focus. People feel really not well generally.

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Some of those studies are a little bit controversial, but I think it's fair to say that if people really increase the amount of probiotic that they're taking beyond a certain amount, then they start feeling foggy in the mind. The ingestion of fermented foods is one of the best ways to support healthy levels of gut microbiota without exceeding the threshold that would cause things like brain fog.

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So much so that some people report that when they start eating small bits, because it doesn't require a lot of fermented foods, that their overall mood is better. Not unlike the effects of EPA, although I don't think it's been looked at directly in the context of clinical depression yet. there are some things that you can do to really damage your gut microbiome.

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And in the brain, everywhere from the deep circuits of the brain to the more kind of what we call higher order revolve centers of the brain, we have this push-pull thing where either in a previous episode, I talked about go, the circuits that allow you to emphasize action and then no-go circuits, the circuits in the basal ganglia that allow you to de-emphasize action and prevent action.

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And this is where there's a huge misconception that I want to clear up. There was a study that showed that artificial sweeteners, but a particular artificial sweetener, which was saccharin, can disrupt the gut microbiome

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in ways that is detrimental to a number of different health markers, increasing inflammatory cytokines and all the other bad things that happen when the gut microbiome is thrown off kilter. Saccharin is not the most typical artificial sweetener that's used.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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The most typical artificial sweeteners that are used are things like aspartame, so-called NutraSweet, or sucralose, or these days stevia, to my knowledge. the negative effects of artificial sweeteners on the gut microbiome were restricted to saccharin.

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So what happens is certain artificial sweeteners, in particular saccharin, disrupt the microbiome and make the environment within the gut, that mucosal lining, more favorable to bacteria microbiota that are not good for the organism. This is an important distinction. It's not just that a language thing where people say, oh, you know, it kills the microbiome.

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It doesn't kill the microbiome, it shifts the microbiome. And shifts in the microbiome can be good or they can be bad. And that takes us to another topic that's a bit of a hot button topic, but I'm willing to go there because I think it deserves conversation.

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which is nowadays, there are many examples out there where people have switched from a kind of standard diet or even a vegetarian diet or vegan diet to a keto diet. Now, keto doesn't necessarily have to mean the ingestion of meats, but it can. And they experience positive effects for themselves. But the ketogenic diet,

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

1770.854

is interesting because when one shifts to the ketogenic diet, there is a shift in the gut microbiome and some people end up feeling better. Some people end up feeling worse. Likewise, some people go from ingesting animal products, including meat, or they're vegetarian and they go to vegan, and they experience positive shifts in mood and affect.

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1793.768

So the point of all this is that when I say you have to find what's right for you, that's not a throwaway statement. Some people's microbiome

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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and the mucosal lining of their of their throat of their gut of their nose everything is improved by diets that are heavily meat-based and don't have many plants other people do much better on a plant-based diet without many meat products or animal products it's highly individual and this probably has roots in genetic makeup this probably has roots in

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what people were raised on, because remember, the nervous system, of course, is set up by your genes, your genetic program, but your nervous system, it adapts early in life to your conditions. That's what it's for. The reason you have a nervous system is to move your body appropriately towards things that are good for you and away from things that are not, but also,

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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it was designed to adapt so that yes, indeed, some people may like certain foods and react to certain foods better than others because of the way that their nervous system was wired, this enteric, as it's called, nervous system that lines the gut and that communicates with the brain. So most of what I've talked about today is,

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black and white, these are things that are present in all of us, the sugar sensing neurons of the gut, the way the vagus is wired, the fact that omega-3, omega-6 tend to improve, the ratios tend to impact mood with high omega-3, omega-6 ratios improving mood. We talked about all sorts of things in the gut brain and body brain axis.

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But when it comes to the microbiome, the key thing is that we all have a microbiome. You want a microbiome, but you want to promote the microbiome that is right for you. And that can be shifted and steered by ingesting certain categories of foods and not others.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

188.428

And so we can break down the discussion about emotions into these simpler versions of themselves. But at the core of that, of attraction or aversion is an important theme that you might realize already, but most people tend to overlook, which is that there's an action there. you're either moving forward or you're moving away from something.

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It's very clear that these fermented foods support the microbiome, that we should be ingesting at least two servings per day, which is quite a lot. that supplementation at low levels can be good. Supplementation at high levels can create this brain fog. Even though some people say that result is controversial, I've experienced this myself and the data looked to me pretty darn solid.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

1918.722

So that's one thing to think about as well. And The other thing about the gut microbiome is that it's highly contextual based on other things that you're doing. So even things like exercise and social wellbeing and connection, those things are also impacting the gut microbiome.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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So find the diet that's right for you and that works for you in the context of the other ethical and lifestyle choices that are important to you. That's my advice. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

1951.036

That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.

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It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

2019.905

So as we round up, I want to share some results with you that without question will impact the way that you respond to food mentally and even physically. I have a colleague at Stanford, Aaliyah Crum, who's done some remarkable experiments on mindset.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

2037.946

Two that are particularly interesting to me, I want to share with you now because they really emphasize how our beliefs can really impact the way that our brain and body work together. I think the most famous of these is an experiment they did where they had two groups of individuals. They were each given a milkshake

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And they had some factors measured from their blood by an IV while they ingested the milkshake and then afterwards as well. And one of the factors that they were looking at was something called ghrelin, G-H-R-E-L-I-N. Ghrelin is a peptide that increases with hunger. So the longer you haven't eaten, the ghrelin goes up. One group got a shake that they were told was a low calorie, healthy shake.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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The other group got a milkshake that they were told was the very decadent high calorie shake. And what they found was that the high calorie shake had a much more robust effect on blunting ghrelin and reducing ghrelin. But the interesting thing you probably guessed already is that it was the exact same shake given to both groups. And this speaks to the so-called top-down

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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The brain has a body so that the organism can move, and the body has a brain so that the organism, you, can move toward or away from things that you deem to be good or bad for you. So there are circuits in the brain for aversion and for attraction toward things, and the body is governing a lot of that.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

21.838

Today, we're talking all about emotions. Emotions are central to our entire experience of life. Whether or not we're happy or sad or depressed or angry is our life experience. And yet I think with all the importance that we've placed on emotions, very few people actually understand how emotions arise in our brain and body.

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or modulation of our physiology. In a previous episode about pain, we talked about the effects of obsessive infatuation and love on pain responses and pain thresholds. This is yet another example where beliefs or subjective feelings can impact physiology at the level of the periphery because grealiness is released in the periphery in the body. And so, This is not just the placebo effect.

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This is an incredible set of findings that illustrate the extent to which whether or not we believe a food is going to be good for us or not good for us, these belief effects are not about lying to yourself. So in order for them to work, you have to be naive to the information, right? You can't simply lie to yourself and tell yourself what you want to believe.

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And that's important, but also important is that the mind and the body are in this fascinating interplay. And today we've talked mainly about how the body and things that we put inside this tube that runs from our mouth to the other end, to our rectum, basically is impacting all these cells, these neurons, microbiota in there,

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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mucosal lining, heart, lungs, and how all that information is feeding up to the brain to impact how we feel up here, but also how we feel up here is impacting how our body reacts at levels of very core physiology that you couldn't just tell yourself that this was going to work, but what you believe about certain substances, certain foods, certain nutrients does have a profound effect on the magnitude of their impact, and sometimes even the quality and direction of that impact.

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So today's episode, we took a full journey into the brain-body relationship and discussed a lot of the mechanisms and the actionable items that you can approach if you want to explore this aspect of your biology and psychology further. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank everybody for your time and attention today. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

228.82

And so immediately in this conversation, I want to raise an important point, which is about a nerve pathway that many, many people have heard of that gets discussed all the time. And that is one of the most kind of oversold for the wrong reasons and undersold, unfortunately, for its real power, which is the vagus nerve.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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So the vagus nerve is one, not the only, but one way in which our brain and body are connected and regulates our emotional states. So what is the vagus nerve? The vagus is the 10th cranial nerve, which basically means that the neurons, the control center of each of those neurons in the vagus lives just kind of near the neck, right? And a branch of the vagus goes into the brain.

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The other branch goes into the periphery, but not just the gut. It goes into the stomach, the intestines, the heart, the lungs, and the immune system. So the way to think about the vagus is the same way I would think about the eyes. The eyes are looking at colors, they're looking at motion, they're looking how bright it is.

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And each one of those things, those features is telling the brain something different so the brain can decide when to be awake or asleep, whether or not it's looking at somebody attractive or unattractive. The vagus nerve is also analyzing many features within the body and informing the brain of how to feel about that and what to do.

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So a really good example that I think is an exciting one is as it relates to sugar. So we all know that sweet things generally taste good. So that makes sense, right? You eat something, it tastes sweet, you want more of it. Well, it turns out that it's much more interesting than that. When you eat something sweet,

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Within your stomach, you have cells, neurons, that sense the presence of sugary foods independent of their taste and signal to the brain. So those sensors, those neurons, send information up the vagus to your brain, goes through a series of stations, and then you release dopamine, this molecule that makes you want more of whatever it is that you just ingested.

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In fact, this pathway is so powerful that they've done experiments where they completely numb all the taste and feeling in somebody's mouth. They're blindfolded, so they don't know what they're eating. And they're eating a food that's either sugary or not sugary. And what they find is that even though people can't taste the sugary food, they crave more of the food

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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that contain sugar because of the sensors in the gut that sense sugar. And what it tells us is that we have circuits in our body that are driving us towards certain behaviors and making us feel good, even though we can't perceive them. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

418.163

Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

42.445

And I mentioned brain and body because as you'll see today, emotions really capture the brain body relationship. We cannot say that emotions arise just from what happens in our head. The other thing about emotions is that there's no real agreement as to what's a good emotion or a bad emotion.

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Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

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Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Now, for those of you that are really interested in gut intuition and kind of gut feelings, this is a gut feeling, except this is a chemical gut feeling.

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This is a particular set of neurons detecting that something in your body has a particular feature, in this case, the presence of sugars, and sending information to the brain essentially to control your behavior. And I find this remarkable. I mean, this should completely reframe the way that we think about the so-called hidden sugars in foods.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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What this means is that even if a food is very savory, like a piece of pizza or a piece of bread, or even like a salad dressing, if there's sugar snuck into that, and you can't taste it, you will still crave more of that thing without knowing that you crave it because it has sugar. So I find this to be a fascinating aspect of our biology.

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A lot of how we feel while we eat and after we eat is because of this vagus sensing of what's in our gut. It's sending information all the time. Is there sugar? Are there fats? Are there contaminants? There are a lot of information, these so-called parallel pathways that are going up in our brain that regulate whether or not we want to eat more of something or not.

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And there are accelerators, things that make us want to eat more, like sugar and fats, because those are nutrient dense and they help generally, at least in the short term, support the survival of animals, but also amino acids. And this is very important.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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Today, we're going to talk about the biology of the chemicals and pathways that give rise to emotions in the context of food and nutrition. The discussion around emotions has a long and rich history going back to Darwin and even long before Darwin. You know, this is a conversation that philosophers and scientists have been having for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

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There are a lot of data, but much of what comes from the data on what people eat and how much they eat is from a subconscious detection of how many amino acids and what the array, meaning the constellation of amino acids is in a given food.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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And it's fair to say that the sum total of these studies point in a direction where people will basically eat not until their stomach is full, but until the brain perceives that they have adequate intake of amino acids. It's amino acids of course are important because they are the building blocks of sure muscle and the other things in our body that need repair.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

634.494

But what most people don't realize is that amino acids are what the neurochemicals in the brain are made from. Now, this is vitally important, okay? So we've heard dopamine is this molecule that makes you feel good. Dopamine release is caused by surprise, excitement, events that you're looking forward to and that turn out well.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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It is inhibited by events you're looking forward to that don't work out. It's called reward prediction error. Your expectation of something releases dopamine and the actual event releases dopamine. And if the event related dopamine does not exceed the expectation or at least match it, there's a much higher tendency that you won't pursue that thing again.

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Dopamine is what's going to lead us to want to eat more of something or to not want more of something because dopamine really is about craving. It's about motivation and it's about desire. And as I mentioned, these amino acid sensors in our gut are detecting how many amino acids, but they're also detecting which amino acids.

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699.719

And there's a particular amino acid called L-tyrosine, which comes from food. It is in meats, it is in nuts, it is also in some plant-based foods. L-tyrosine is the precursor to a couple other molecules like L-DOPA, et cetera, that make dopamine. However, the dopamine neurons that give rise to these feelings of good or wanting more or desire and motivation, those reside in the brain.

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So we don't want to get too confused. We want to respect and honor the power of the gut and this vagal pathway, but it's really neurons within your brain that drive the pursuit and decision-making. So what does this mean? Well, some people make too little dopamine. Some people make so little dopamine that they need prescription dopamine. They need L-Dopa.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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People with Parkinson's take L-Dopa and other compounds to increase dopamine because Parkinson's is associated with deficits in movement. Parkinson's is a... it's a blunting of motivation and mood and affect, and it's a tremor. And then eventually in severe conditions, it's challenges in speaking and walking.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

767.26

So that some famous examples would be Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, the great boxing trainer, Freddie Roach, like these people have Parkinson's and they at least later in their life had challenges speaking. Now, some people immediately ask, well, should I supplement L-tyrosine? It does increase kind of mood and elevation and alertness. It is over the counter. You have to check with your doctor.

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I'm not responsible for your healthcare and I'm not a doctor whether or not it's safe for you. People with preexisting hyper dopaminergic conditions like mania should probably not take L-tyrosine. The other thing about taking L-tyrosine is there is a crash.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

804.82

It's not a massive crash if you take it at appropriate doses and it's right for you, but it can produce a crash and a lethargy and a kind of brain fog after the next day or so. And so, L-tyrosine, however, can be ingested through foods or through supplementation to increase dopamine levels. That's well known. Taken chronically, however, it can disrupt those dopamine pathways.

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Essentials: How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

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You know, the idea that Darwin put forth and that was really attractive for about the last hundred years was that emotions are universal and that some of the facial expressions around emotion are universal and other people have, you know, capitalized on that idea. And to some extent it's true. I mean, I think that the two most robust examples of that would be when we see something

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Let's just kind of take stock of where we're at. We have a brain-body connection. There are many of them, but one of the main ones is the vagus nerve. The vagus collects information about a lot of things, breathing, heart rate, stuff that's happening in the gut, et cetera. And gut, by the way, includes the stomach and the intestines, sends that information up to the brain.

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The brain is using that information to decide one of two things, move towards something or move away. It can also pause, but essentially pausing is not moving toward. So that's the dopamine pathway and foods rich in L-tyrosine generally give us an elevated mood and make us want to do more of whatever it is that we happen to be doing as well as other things. Motivation generalizes to other things.

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It's not unique to just ingesting foods. but foods that give us a big pulse of dopamine will make us crave more of that food. It will make us crave more of the activity that led to the ingestion of that food. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of that is happening at a subconscious level that you're not even aware of.

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So the other neuromodulator that's really interesting in the context of the vagus is serotonin. Serotonin, just to remind you, is a neuromodulator, therefore it creates a bias in which neural circuits, which neurons in the brain and body are going to be active, and it makes it less likely that other ones are going to be active.

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And serotonin, when it's elevated, tends to make us feel really comfortable and kind of blissed out wherever we are. And that contrast with dopamine and epinephrine, which mainly put us in pursuit of things, motivation is pursuit.

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The conversation around the brain-body relationship and mood in serotonin for many years was, well, you eat a big meal, the gut is distended, you've got all the nutrients you need, you rest and digest, and serotonin is released. That's sort of true, but there's a lot more going on and a lot more that's interesting and actionable that's going on.

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First of all, some of you, but perhaps not all have heard that more than 90% of the serotonin that we make is in our gut. And indeed we have a lot of serotonin in our gut, but here's the deal. Most of the serotonin that impacts our mood and our mental state is not in our gut. Most of it is in the neurons of the brain in an area called the raphe nucleus of the brain.

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There are a few other locations too.

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You can't have a discussion about serotonin without having discussion about antidepressants because during the late 80s and early 90s, there was this explosion in the number of prescription drugs that were released, things like first one and most famous one is Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, a number of other ones that are so-called SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

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Basically those drugs work by preventing the gobbling up of serotonin or re-uptake of serotonin into neurons after it's been released, which leads to more serotonin overall, which means to elevate serotonin. And indeed those drugs were and can be very useful for certain people to feel better in cases of depression and some other clinical disorders as well.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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They did it the very next day, which if you've ever trained a muscle the very next day, typically you wouldn't do as well in its training if it took any damage from the previous sessions, or you at least do as well, but you probably wouldn't do what they then observed, which was they started cooling after every other set.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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The person would just hold the cold tube, cool down the body after every other set, rest, everything else was kept the same. And they found that they went to 180 pull-ups, which is incredible. It's a near doubling. Now you may be asking, what about endurance? And with endurance, similar increases have been shown. And the way that they would do those tests are a little bit different.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1051.811

And they also point to a really important mechanism of why we stop doing work at all when we perceive that we are putting in too much effort. So it gets right to the heart of the relationship between temperature in muscles and your willpower. Those are directly related. body heat and your willpower are linked in a physiological way.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1072.4

Okay, so let's talk about willpower and heat and how heat shuts you down. In other words, if you are cool, if your body temperature is in a particular range, not only can you go further, but you will go further if you want to. Said differently, if you heat up too much, you will stop or you will die. But there's a reflex

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that relates the body to the brain and the brain to the body that shuts off our effort when we get too hot. So what Craig and his colleagues and now others have done is to do a test in the laboratory where rather than ask people to run outside until they absolutely don't want to run anymore, you put them on a treadmill and you set the speed.

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110.999

Believe it or not, temperature is the most powerful variable for improving physical performance and for recovery. There are two aspects to temperature, of course. There's heat and there's cold. We are mainly going to focus on cold as a way to buffer heat. We're going to talk about cold from the standpoint of thermal physiology.

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So they have to keep up with the treadmill and at some point they quit. and you take groups and you do those in different temperature environments. So some people are running in a nice chilly laboratory, they get their heart rate up, so they're getting into a steady state cadence or rhythm and their heart is beating at more or less a steady state. People will continue

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1142.836

at that temperature and at that heart rate, unless you start turning up the temperature in the room. And at some point they will stop and they'll stop much earlier when it gets hot because of something called cardiac drift, okay? So let's say I'm running and I'm running at a steady cadence on this treadmill and my heart rate is 85 beats per minute or a hundred beats per minute, doesn't matter.

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1165.168

Let's say a hundred, just for sake of example. Well, just making the room hotter is going to increase my heart rate further, even though I'm at the same output. And the brain does a computation. It somehow figures out that there's a heat component that's increasing heart rate, and there's an effort component from running that's driving heart rate.

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1187.245

And if the heat component and the heart rate output from the effort get to hit a certain threshold, I stop. Increasing temperature increases the rate of quitting in part, not entirely, but in part because of this thing called cardiac drift. Heat increases heart rate, effort increases heart rate. At a steady effort, you'll have a steady heart rate.

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1211.054

If you increase the heat in the environment that you're engaging in that steady heart rate, your heart rate will now go up due to cardiac drift and you will quit, okay? So Heller and colleagues, have done experiments where they do Palmer cooling under these environments. And that's wonderful because not only does it enable people to go further and faster

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1236.513

for much longer, that's been shown, statistically significant every time, but it also protects the brain and body against hyperthermia, overheating, coma, nerve injury, nerve death, and actual death. So you can see why this is such a valuable tool. So how can you start to incorporate this? Well, first of all, I always get asked how cold should the water be? Should it be ice water?

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1262.585

Should it be very cold water? The answer is no. If you want to experience some of this effect without a device, one thing you could do would be, for instance, to do, I don't know, I'll use the gym or the treadmill as an example. You could do your maximum number of pull-ups, stop, and then you could actually put your hands into or on the surface of,

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a sink that is presumably stopped up with cool water. So not ice water, not freezing cold, but cool water. Slightly cooler than body temperature before you started training would be a good place to start. You do that for 10 to 30 seconds, then you could go back and do your next set. You would repeat the cooling. You would want to extend the amount of cooling somewhat.

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1311.912

So you might want to do that for 30 seconds to a minute. This is not going to be perfect. You're going to have to play with how cold to make it in order to get the optimal effect, but you ought to see an effect nonetheless. The same is true if you're running and you're fatiguing, obviously you don't want to become hyperthermic,

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1329.326

cooling the hands or the bottoms of your feet or the face would be the ideal way to dump heat in order to be able to generate more output. Now, the face is something that we haven't talked a lot about. Everything I've told you up until now also says that if you are somebody who tends to get cold when you are outside, say in the winter or even in the fall, you tend to run cold,

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135.337

This is a literature that's rich in scientific information that goes back very deep into the last century. where physiologists and neuroscientists figured out that there are different compartments in your body that heat and cool you differently, and that you can leverage those in order to double, even triple or quadruple your work output, both strength, repetitions, and endurance.

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1351.011

Warming your face is going to be the most important thing that you can do. Now you understand the principle and the locations at which to deliver heat and cold. So let's say that you are out for a run and you want to incorporate this cooling mechanism. I talked to Craig about this. I said, what would be the kind of a poor person's approach to this one?

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1369.686

He said, well, you could take a frozen juice can, if you have one of those, or a very cold can of soda, and you would want to pass it back and forth between your two hands. The reason the passing back and forth is really important is because you, again, you don't want it to be so cold that you constrict those venous portals that will allow cold to go into the body.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1393.842

Now, there are certainly people that are working on bike handles and that can actually cool the hands. Here's what you don't want to do. You don't want to cool the core if you want to cool the body, right?

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1407.89

If it's a very hot day and you're going to train, getting into an ice bath first, sure, it will cool you down, but that's not going to be as effective as cooling the palms, the bottoms of the feet and the face. The one that I've tried because in anticipation of this episode was the dips where then I would cool my hands.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1428.384

I actually decided to cool the bottoms of my feet as well because it just feels good and it's particularly hot out lately. So no shoes or socks on, put my feet into the bottoms of my feet, just kind of hovering about a centimeter or two below the surface of a bucket of water that was just slightly, it felt cool, slightly cooler than body temperature or so.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1447.297

It just basically what came out of the spigot after I let it run for a little bit. And indeed I saw a 60% increase in the number of dips I can do in a single session. So it's actually a quite significant effect and you don't have to be perfectly precise in order to do it. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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And I should say by taking a second function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1545.682

It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1564.05

Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So up until now, we've been talking about how to use cold during a workout in order to improve performance. Now I want to talk about the use of temperature, in particular cold, to improve the speed and the depth of recovery. Recovery is obviously vital, right?

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

1587.118

During a weight training session or during an endurance session, that's just the stimulus for getting better the next time. And if you don't recover, you not only won't get better, but you'll get worse. There's a lot of interest in the use of cold in order to improve recovery in the short term.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

159.536

So this is not weak sauce as they say, this is the stuff that can really shift the needle quite a bit. And it's not just about performing well once, It's about being able to perform well and recover from that performance so that you do even better when you're not incorporating these tools. On days where, for instance, you can't access cold or an ice pack or an ice bath or things of that sort.

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1605.1

We see this and probably the best example of this would be fighters in combat sports between rounds or athletes in between quarters or halftime. That's one form of recovery. The ability to go back into the sport very soon on an order of minutes, anywhere from like one minute in between rounds in typical combat sports or several minutes at a halftime, et cetera.

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1628.815

And then of course there's recovery that occurs from session to session. So outside of the game or the match or the exercise session. And many people are now relying on things like cryotherapy, which requires a lot of expensive equipment, big liquid nitrogen driven machine. Those aren't so common for most people or accessible for most people.

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1651.641

But a lot of people are using cold baths or ice baths or cold showers. And again, that's not going to optimize recovery. In fact, it's going to have an additional effect that is going to potentially block the training stimulus. When you get into an ice bath, you are indeed blocking some of the inflammation that occurs because of the training session.

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1672.258

But in doing so, you also are blocking pathways such as mTOR, mammalian targeted rapamycin, which are involved in the adaptation for a muscle to become stronger or bigger. Put simply, covering the body in cold or immersing the body in cold after training can short circuit or prevent the hypertrophy or muscle growth response. It has other effects that can be positive, right?

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1697.912

It can induce thermogenesis, et cetera. It can reduce inflammation, but it can prevent some of the positive effects of exercise. Now it hasn't been examined so much for endurance work,

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1708.877

But let's say you come back from a round of endurance work, a run or a bike or a swim, getting into a cool bath or cooling the palms, the bottoms of the feet or the face, in my opinion, based on the science would be better than completely immersing the body in the ice bath. If you can cool the body back to its resting temperature,

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1731.569

and by resting temperature, I mean within the range that you would see at any time of waking day, but not in exercise. If you can do that, the sooner you can do that after a workout, the sooner that the muscle will recover, that the tendons will recover, and that the person, you, can get back into more endurance training, more weight training, et cetera.

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1751.696

So cold actually can be a very powerful tool for recovery, but to maximize return to baseline levels of temperature, just simply cooling the entire body by jumping into an ice bath or a cold shower is not the best way to go. You really want to rely on one of these three glabrous skin portals of the palms, the bottoms of the feet or the face.

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1771.01

One of the more commonly used compounds that's sold over the counter are non-steroid anti-inflammatories. So things like Advil and other trade names and naproxen sodium, things of that sort. Almost all of those drop body temperature to some extent. And that's why it's often recommended that people take them when they have a fever.

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1791.92

Now, a number of athletes, especially endurance athletes, will rely on these non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs specifically to keep body temperature lower during long bouts of exertion. This is a little bit of a pharmacologic version of dumping heat instead of using Palmer cooling or face ice pack cooling, they're relying on pharmacology to drop their core body temperature.

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1818.415

That has certain obvious advantages. Lower temperature allows you to go further harder with more intensity. However, they do have effects on the liver and they can also have effects on the kidneys. And during long bouts of exercise or even short bouts of exercise, water balance and salt balance are also going to be vital to maintain in order to perform well

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.

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the best muscle contraction, stay mentally alert, and also to stay alive. You probably want to think carefully about whether or not you want to use non-steroid anti-inflammatories before any training session, just for the performance augmentation effect, unless you're working carefully with a coach. I personally am more a fan of,

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cooling of the palms, cooling of the bottoms of my feet, right, by placing them into a bucket or into a cool bath after training, or cooling the face after training, or sometimes even during training. It just seems like there's more of a margin to play with the variables, to heat up the water, cool it down a little bit, to include one palm or the other palm. There's just all sorts of,

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parameter space as we call it in science that you can play with and work with to find what works for you. Whereas when you pop a pill, sure, you can adjust the dose and you can adjust it next time. But once it's in you, it's in you. And there's going to be some period of time before you can modulate it.

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So it doesn't give you a lot of opportunity to play scientist, which is what I like to do, because what I'm always trying to do is trying to dial in the best protocols possible based on the mechanisms and data. And if you can do that moment to moment, that places you in a position of power. Once again, we've covered a lot of material.

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By now, after seeing this episode or listening to this episode, you should understand a lot about how your body heats and cools itself and the value of that for physical performance. I hope you'll also appreciate that you have tools at your disposal to vastly improve your physical performance.

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I've given you specific protocols and some direction, but I've also left it slightly vague because as I mentioned earlier, I don't know all the environmental conditions. I don't know how hot your yoga studio is or how cool your gym happens to be or your body temperature or time of day. Remember, your temperature will vary according to time of day.

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Going forward, we're going to talk more about temperature and other ways to improve physical performance and skill learning. We're going to talk about specific ways to accelerate fat loss, to improve muscle growth, to improve suppleness and flexibility.

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These approaches and mechanisms are anchored deeply in neuroscience and physiology and the relationship between our peripheral organs, which include our skin, and our brain and all the organs in between. And last but not least, I want to thank you for your time and attention. I realize this is a lot of information.

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I hope you'll find some of it to be actionable and useful for you and for people that you know. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.

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It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring you zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. We just closed out the episodes on hormones. Now we are going to talk about how to optimize physical performance and skill learning. There are so many variables to physical performance.

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Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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Let's start by talking about temperature. How does temperature impact the body and its ability to perform, including learn new skills? So everyone probably remembers or has at least heard of the word homeostasis, right? That the body wants to remain in a particular range of temperatures, that it doesn't like to be too hot or too cold. Heating up too much is just plain bad.

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273.163

It's not just bad for physical performance, it's bad for all tissue health. cells stop functioning, they stop being able to generate energy, they stop being able to digest things, you stop being able to think, and eventually those cells start dying off entirely. Now, you don't want to become hypothermic either. You can die from hypothermia just like you can die from hyperthermia.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

297.677

However, that you have a lot more range to be cold than you do to be too warm. And in general, the idea is to keep the body and brain in a particular range, but anytime we do anything, our body temperature can shift. So for instance, if you were to stand next to a campfire or you were outside on a hot day, various things would happen to dump heat from your body. Now, what are those things?

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326.64

Well, there are a huge category of them, but the simplest way to think about this process is that when we get cold, we tend to vasoconstrict. Our blood vessels tend to constrict and we tend to push energy toward the core of our body to preserve our core organs.

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344.711

So our periphery, our hands and our feet and our toes and our legs become colder and our core therefore can maintain blood to that area and we are insulating our core. Conversely, when we heat up our blood vessels vasodilate, they expand a bit and more blood flows to our periphery and more blood can move throughout the body generally. And we will perspire, we will sweat.

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371.096

Water will actually get pulled out of the blood to some extent, moved up through sweat glands and will be brought to the skin surface so that it can be dumped. We are dumping heat.

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382.182

So it's very important that if you want to understand how you can leverage temperature for physical performance, you have to understand that you have vasoconstriction to conserve heat, vasodilation to dump heat, that you have sweating to dump heat, and you have conservation of fluids in order to preserve heat.

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40.894

and we can manage physical performance and skill learning from a variety of contexts. I made just a short list of some of the things that come to mind that can powerfully impact physical performance and skill learning. Some of them are what I would consider foundational. They allow you to show up with your current ability. And if you were to disrupt those, you would perform less well.

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402.335

That's the most important thing in terms of understanding the mechanisms of maintaining and dumping heat. And now the most important thing to understand is that if you get too hot, your ability to contract your muscles stops, okay? I'm going to repeat this because it's vitally important. ATP, is involved in the process of generating muscle contractions.

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424.905

The range of temperatures within which ATP can function and muscles can contract is very narrow. Somewhere around 39 or 40 degrees Celsius, it drops off and you will not be able to generate more contractions. Now it's pretty hot, but that temperature can be generated locally really fast. Put simply, if you get too hot, you stop exercising.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

448.867

You may not even realize it, but your will to exercise further, your ability to push harder is entirely dependent on the heat of the muscle, both locally and your whole system. If you can keep temperature in range, however, in a proper range, you will be able to do more work. You will be able to create greater output.

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470.343

You'll be able to lift more weight, more sets, more reps, and you'll be able to run further. Now there are data that I'm going to talk about in a little bit that are absolutely striking that underscore that statement. There are data from my colleague, Craig Heller's lab in the department of biology at Stanford.

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Many, if not all the NFL teams are now using this technology as well as military uses it and not just for sports performance, but also firefighters, construction workers, other professions where elevated heat becomes a barrier to performance. And you can leverage this to really improve your workouts. So how do you dump heat in order to perform longer safely?

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511.089

Well, in order to understand that, you have to understand that the body has three main compartments for regulating temperature, okay? We don't just have a center and a periphery, we have three main compartments. And there's one compartment in particular that all of you, or most all of you, I have to assume have,

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529.003

and if you can understand how that works you can do tremendous things for your performance and for your recovery one is your core we already talked about that your core organs your heart your lungs your pancreas your liver the core of your body the other is your periphery which are obviously your arms and your legs and your feet and your hands but then there's a third component

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

553.578

which is there are three locations on your body that are far better at passing heat out of the body and bringing cool into the body such that you can heat up or cool your body everywhere very quickly. Those three areas are your face, the palms of your hands, and the bottoms of your feet.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

577.509

Now the skin on your hands and on the bottoms of your feet and to some extent on your face are called glabrous skin. That's G-L-A-B-O-R-O-U-S, glabrous skin. And what's special about those areas of your body and the glabrous skin is that The arrangement of vasculature of blood vessels, capillaries, and arteries that serve those regions is very different than it is elsewhere in your body.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

606.79

In these three regions of your hands, your face, and the bottoms of your feet, we have what are called AVAs. AVAs are a very special pattern of vasculature. AVAs are arteriovenous astimoses, A-R-T-E-R-I-O, arteriovenous, V-E-N-O-U-S, arteriovenous anastomosis, A-N-A-S-T-O-M-O-S-E-S. Arteriovenous astomosis, okay? You want to know about arteriovenous astomosis, trust me.

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63.422

So things like getting a good night's sleep, things like being properly hydrated, things like being well-nourished, there are supplements, there are drugs, there are different ways to breathe. There are so many tools related to mindset visualization. It's just a vast space, but it's not infinite.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

644.554

AVAs are direct connections between the small arteries and the small veins. They bypass the capillaries to some extent. They're little short vessel segments. They have a big, large inner diameter, and they have this very thick muscular wall. and they get input from what are called adrenergic neurons.

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665.015

They get input from neurons that release norepinephrine and epinephrine, which allows them to contract or dilate. Now there's some rules of physics that talk about how the radius of a pipe and small changes in the radius of a pipe leads to massive increases in the rate and amount of stuff that can flow through that pipe.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

688.134

It's a rule of physics that says essentially that the radius is proportional to the amount of stuff that can flow through something to the fourth power. What you need to know, even if you don't want to know any of the underlying physics is that these AVAs allow more heat to leave the body more quickly and more cool to enter the body more quickly than other energy sources.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

713.005

arterial capillary beds throughout the body. In other words, you can heat up best at the face, the palms and the bottoms of the feet, and you can cool down best at the face, the palms and the bottoms of the feet than you can anywhere else on your body.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

728.112

These three compartments of your body, palms, bottoms of feet and face are your best leverage points for manipulating temperature to vastly improve physical performance. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

748.686

Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

766.74

And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

778.524

Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

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790.249

And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

805.719

If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

82.066

And there are a few things in the list of things that can impact and even optimize physical performance and skill learning that have an outsized effect that any of you can use. So today we are going to focus on what I believe to be one of the most powerful tools to improve physical performance and skill learning and recovery. And we'll talk about why that's important. And that's temperature.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

823.115

Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. So what Craig and his colleagues did really illustrates perfectly what these body surfaces can do and why. They were studying overheating in athletes and in military and in construction workers and trying to prevent it.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

846.173

What they essentially found was that cooling the palms, Palmer cooling allowed people, athletes and recreational athletes to run much further, to lift more weight and to do more sets and reps to a absolutely staggering degree. Let's talk for a second a bit more about why we stop, why we shut off effort when we get too hot. When muscle heats up,

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

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enzymes start getting disrupted and ATP and muscles can't work so well and those muscles can't contract. The enzyme that's involved here is something called pyruvate kinase and pyruvate kinase is essentially a rate limiting step. It's a critical step that you can't bypass if you want muscles to contract and it's very temperature sensitive.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

905.376

Therefore, if you can keep temperature lower, you can do more work per unit time. You can do more pull-ups. What they essentially did is they brought someone into their laboratory who could do 10 pull-ups on the first set, and they were able to get 10, rest two or three minutes, get another 10, rest two or three minutes.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

924.769

And if you've ever tried this, what you find is that you start dropping to eight, seven, six, et cetera. Now, the person might not necessarily feel like they're overheating, but the muscle is heating up.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

936.136

Then with their knowledge that these AVAs, that these portals in the palms are a great way to both heat the body, but also to dump heat from the body, they used a device, and I'll talk about what you can do at home, but a device where they had people hold on to what was essentially a cold tube. Now this is crucial.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

961.067

The tube can't be so cold that it causes vasoconstriction because then the cold won't pass from the tube to the hand and to the core. But if it's the right temperature, it's neither too hot nor too cold, that cool from the cold tube passes into the hand, these so-called palmar regions, and then cools the core.

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Essentials: Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling

985.131

And in theory, by lowering body temperature would allow the person or the athlete to do more work. And indeed that's what they saw. The actual data, the specific data showed that subjects could do, at least the subjects they worked with, on their first day with no cooling, about a hundred pull-ups across the timeframe that they had. Then they came back and did the cooling.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

0.27

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. The second piece of behavioral advice relates to the viewing of light.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

102.611

And the enzymes that we're going to talk about today are the aromatases mainly. The aromatases convert testosterone into estrogen. So in a male, for instance, that has very high testosterone, some of that is going to be converted into estrogen by aromatase. The important thing to know is that prepubescent females make very little estrogen.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1025.324

And many of you have heard me talk about this before, and I'm not going to belabor the point that

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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viewing bright light within the first hour of waking whether or not it's from artificial light or ideally from sunlight has these powerful effects on sleep and wakefulness but we have to return to this if you want to understand how light can impact hormones because hormones light and dopamine have a very close-knit relationship so much so that your light viewing behavior can actually have a direct effect on hormone levels and fertility

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1056.275

And I think most people don't really understand how powerful this relationship is between light dopamine hormones.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1062.777

And when dopamine levels are high, as I mentioned before, there's a tendency for more gonadotropin releasing hormone, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, all the hormones that come from the hypothalamic pituitary axis and stimulate estrogen and testosterone release from the ovary and testes. So how does this translate to a protocol? If you want to optimize testosterone and estrogen,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1085.385

you need to get your light viewing behavior correct. It's not just about optimizing your sleep, which is also important. It's about getting sufficient amount of light in your eyes so you have sufficient levels of dopamine. So the simple protocols for that I've reviewed before, but it means getting anywhere from two to 10 minutes of bright light exposure in your eyes early in the day.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1104.974

It is not sufficient to do this with sunglasses, unless you have to do that for safety reasons. It's fine to wear prescription lenses and contacts.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1112.157

If you can't get sunlight for whatever reason, you want to use bright artificial light, but that is absolutely critical for timing the cortisol release properly, limiting cortisol release to the early part of the day, getting increases in dopamine that are going to promote the production of testosterone and estrogen to healthy levels.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1129.09

The other aspect of light viewing behavior that's extremely important is to avoid bright light exposure to your eyes in the middle of the night. If you're viewing bright light in the middle of the night, you are suppressing dopamine release. If you're suppressing dopamine release, you are suppressing testosterone levels.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1145.878

So you can't even begin to talk about supplements and other ways to optimize testosterone, diet and its effects on testosterone and estrogen and fertility and reproductive behavior, et cetera. until you get your breathing right, until you get things like your light viewing behavior right. So bright light early in the day and throughout the day is great.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1163.945

And avoiding bright light in the middle of the night is not just about not disrupting your sleep. It's also about optimizing the sex steroid hormones. Okay, so we've talked about breathing. We've talked about light.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1174.51

Let's talk about a third element that there seems to be some excitement about lately for other reasons, but that can actually have some pretty profound influences on hormone levels, and that's heat and cold.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1188.78

So as always, rather than just offer a tool, I'm going to tell you the underlying science as it relates to naturally occurring phenomenon, because in understanding that and understanding the mechanism, you're going to be in a far better position to understand the tools and mechanisms and how you might want to adjust them for your own life.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1206.364

So now you understand the relationship between light, day length, dopamine, and hormone levels. and everyone should realize that temperature and day length are linked. Temperature and day length and sunlight, those are all intimately related because of the systems that we evolved in, right? So nowadays there's a lot of interest in using cold as a way to stimulate testosterone.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

122.478

And when we talk about estrogen, we mainly talk about estradiol, which is the most active form of estrogen in both males and females. So prepubescent females, very low levels of estrogen. During puberty, levels of estrogen, AKA estradiol, basically skyrocket. And then across the lifespan, Estrogen is going to vary depending on the stage of the menstrual cycle.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1231.029

Sounds pretty crazy, but believe it or not, that and things like ice baths and cold showers can have positive effects on the sex steroid hormones. what happens is there's a rebound in vasodilation after cooling. So cooling causes vasoconstriction. And then after the cooling, there's a rebound vasodilation and there's more infusion of blood into the gonads.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1256.405

Put simply, we don't know whether or not cold and heat directly affect the production of testosterone and estrogen. We only know that cold and heat can modulate those probably through indirect mechanisms like controlling the amount of blood flow by way of shutting down or activating the neurons. Now let's talk about particular forms of exercise and how they modulate the steroid hormones.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1280.536

So what's interesting is when you start digging into the more mechanistic studies, what you find is that Heavy weight trainings, but not weight training to failure, where completion of a repetition is impossible, leads to the greatest increases in testosterone. So anywhere from one rep maximum to somewhere in the six to eight repetition range in males or females,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1304.907

increases testosterone significantly. And it does it for about a day, sometimes up to 48 hours. Now, many of you might be endurance athletes or also enjoy exercise besides heavy weight bearing exercise. And there are several studies exploring whether or not

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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endurance activity can increase or decrease androgen levels and whether or not you combine endurance activity and weight training, whether or not that has any effect if you do the endurance activity first or second. And the takeaway from all of this was that endurance activity, if performed first,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1341.497

leads to decreases in testosterone during the weight training session, as compared to the same weight training session done first, followed by endurance activity. In other words, if you want to optimize testosterone levels, it seems to be the case that weight training first and doing cardio type endurance activity afterward is the right order of business.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1360.902

Now, when these are done on separate days, it doesn't seem to have an effect. They showed no statistical interaction. But it seems that if you're going to do these in the same workout episode, that it's move heavy loads first, then do cardiovascular exercise. So there's a little bit of data looking specifically at how endurance exercise impacts testosterone and its derivatives.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1382.354

And it's very clear that high intensity interval training, sprinting, et cetera, which somewhat mimics the neural activity that occurs while moving heavy weight loads is going to increase testosterone. There's ample evidence for that in the literature.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1396.563

And that endurance exercise that extends beyond 75 minutes is going to start to lead to reductions in testosterone, presumably by increases in cortisol. So now let's switch over to talking about estrogen. So there are many people who are trying to optimize their estrogen levels. And one of the places where this shows up a lot, and I get a lot of questions about, is menopause.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1418.278

So menopause, as I mentioned earlier, is this fairly massive reduction in the amount of estrogen that is circulating in one's blood, mainly because the ovary is now depleted of some estrogen production of its own, the eggs are not being produced, they've been depleted, et cetera.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1436.714

So menopause is characterized by a variety of symptoms, things like hot flashes, things like mood swings, things like headaches, in particular migraine headaches. There can be a lot of brain fog. It can be very, very disruptive for people. So what are the various things that one can do for menopause? Well, one of the most common ones is that physicians will prescribe supplemental estrogen.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

144.186

But as one heads into menopause, which typically takes place nowadays, somewhere between age 45 and 60, levels of estrogen are going to drop. And then post-menopause levels of estrogen are very low. As well, testosterone will fluctuate across the lifespan. Testosterone is going to be relatively low pre-puberty in males. During puberty, it's going to skyrocket.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1459.793

So this is hormone therapy where somebody takes either oral estrogen or they'll use a patch or a pellet, some way to secrete estradiol into the system. And that has varying success depending on the individual. Some people respond very well to it. Other people really have challenges with it. And there are a lot of side effects associated with it for some people, not others.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1481.428

In addition, there's a concern always about supplementing estrogen when there's a breast cancer background in the family, or there's concern about breast cancer for any reason, because a lot of those cancers are estrogen dependent. And that's why drugs like tamoxifen and anastrozole and drugs that block either aromatase or block, excuse me, estrogen receptors directly were initially developed.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1506.638

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1553.033

Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1572.402

that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1608.205

Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Okay, so now let's talk about the role of specific compounds, some of which, many of which can be taken in supplementation form to optimize sex steroid hormones. It's very clear that certain collections of nutrients are useful for promoting testosterone and estrogen production in their proper ratios.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1634.299

And those things are what I would call the sort of usual suspects. Vitamin D, which is important for so many biological functions, including endocrine functions, zinc, magnesium, et cetera. One of the things that's been shown time and time again to have very negative effects on sex steroid hormones, testosterone mainly in men, estrogen mainly in women, is opioids. The opioids...

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

165.726

And then the current numbers are that it drops off at about a rate of 1% per year. So let's talk about other sources of these hormones. And then it will make clear what, you might want to take in order to optimize these hormones. The other glands and tissues in the body that make these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, as I mentioned briefly, are the adrenals.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1660.037

dramatically reduce levels of testosterone and estrogen. And they do that mainly by disrupting the receptors on gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons, these neurons within the hypothalamus that communicate to the pituitary. And in fact, people that take large amounts of opioids or even take low levels of opioids for long periods of time will develop all sorts of endocrine syndromes.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1682.339

That's been shown over and over again, gynecomastia or male breast development in males, disruptions to the ovary in females. It's really a quite terrible situation. So excessive opioids are, very problematic for sex steroid hormones.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1697.909

Now there's an entire industry devoted to supplements and various things that people can take to increase testosterone, some of which have scientific data to support them, some of which do not, and some of which have anecdotal support and some of which do not. There are supplements, in particular Tongkat Ali, which has this other name. It's something I've called Tongkat Ali.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1720.069

Sometimes it's called, and forgive me that it's hard to pronounce, but uricoma longifolia jack. This has been shown in several studies, and you can find these on examine.com, or you can go to PubMed if you like. I've looked at these, that it does seem to have some pro-fertility, pro-free testosterone, and subtle aphrodisiac effects. It does also seem to be a slight anti-estrogen.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1744.997

So the reports of this are people take this anywhere from 400 to 800 milligrams a day. Again, I'm not suggesting you do that, but that's kind of what's out there. And there is some decent scientific literature to support the fact that it liberates some of the bound testosterone and allows more free testosterone to be available.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1762.931

Some of the reported quote unquote side effects are things like excessive alertness and insomnia if it's taken too late in the day and so forth. But I encourage you to explore that further if increasing free testosterone is something that you're interested in doing. People with different backgrounds and conditions, as we talked about for menopause and estrogen,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1780.629

You have to be careful because when you're starting to modulate hormones, you're starting to modulate not just the tissues that thrive on binding of those hormones, but remember, the reason why there's so much breast cancer and there's a reason why there's so much testicular cancer is that any tissue that undergoes rapid reproduction of particular cells, so there's a lot of reproduction of cells and shedding of uterine lining and the reproduction of cells and eggs in the ovary, and in the testes, there's the production of,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1811.77

and Sertoli cells, and there's this kind of ongoing production of sperm, that's why those tissues are particularly vulnerable to the development of cancers. And many of those cancers are androgen sensitive. That's why one of the major treatments for prostate overgrowth or prostate cancer is to give anti-androgenic drugs.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1830.125

It's really about trying to prevent testosterone from encouraging growth of tumors. So I want to really emphasize the caution there. because it is easy when thinking about optimizing estrogen and testosterone to just think, oh, more is better. More is definitely not better.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1846.015

Any tissue that recycles itself is prone to cancers and those tissues thrive on androgens and estrogens to create more tumors. So you have to be careful anytime you're modulating hormones, especially androgens and estrogens. And while we're talking about supplementation, the effects of supplementation

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1866.579

I would say in some individuals can be quite dramatic, but they're always, always, always, except in extreme cases, going to be far more subtle than would be, for instance, just injecting testosterone or injecting estrogen, et cetera. So I think we should just be honest and upfront about that. So thus far, in terms of talking about optimizing hormones and in the discussion of supplementation,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

188.987

So the adrenals right on top of the kidneys and the release of these steroid hormones from the adrenals in particular testosterone and some of its related derivatives are mainly activated by competition. Pretty interesting. There's a lot of evidence in animals and humans that competitive scenarios, at least short-lived competitive scenarios, can liberate testosterone from the adrenals.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1892.304

I haven't really talked about things that actually affect the brain directly that increase the pituitary output and things of that sort. We've mainly been talking about things that free up testosterone or that increase estrogen at the level of the periphery. But if you remember way back to the beginning of this episode, hormones are made in different locations in the body.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1908.991

And there are hormones that promote the release and the production of hormones from other tissues in the body. And one of the main hormones for that is luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone, again, comes from the pituitary, circulates, and either goes to the,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1922.316

ovary to promote various aspects of egg maturation, as well as production of estrogen and to the testes to promote testosterone and sperm production. And the prescription version of increasing luteinizing hormone is something called HCG or human chorionic gonadotropin, which has been synthesized and is now available as a prescription drug.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1948.365

It's taken in various contexts for increasing fertility, both by males and by females. It can increase for all the reasons that now make sense. It can increase sperm production. It can produce ovulation frequency. It can produce the number of eggs even that are deployed in a given ovulation, although that's not always a good thing.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1970.3

It basically is pro-fertility, pro-testosterone, pro-estrogen, depending on your background. And what's interesting is HCG was initially synthesized, collected and synthesized from pregnant women's urine. And believe it or not, before it was synthetically made and sold as a prescription drug, there was actually a black market for pregnant women's urine where people would buy the urine.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

1999.357

I don't know, I'm guessing that they probably just consumed it, which is weird. But in any case, Human chorionic gonadotropin is now available as a prescription drug. And it's one of the things that many people use to increase testosterone or estrogen for increasing fertility.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2016.586

But there are certain supplements, not many, that apparently can increase luteinizing hormone and thereby can increase testosterone and estrogen. And one of the more well-documented ones is Fadogia agrestis, that's F-A-D-O-G-I-A, separate word A-G-R-E-S-T-I-S, which at least according to the literature that I was able to find,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2039.867

can increase levels of luteinizing hormone and thereby levels of testosterone or levels of estrogen. The side effect profile of Fidogea aggressive hasn't really been documented, so it's a little unclear. I just want to emphasize that anytime someone's going to start taking supplements or modifying sex steroid hormones, getting blood work done is extremely important.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2062.003

for safety reasons, and also just to know whether or not things are working. And because all of these things are subject to negative feedback, talked about this previously, previous episode, but if testosterone goes high or too high, it can feed back and shut down luteinizing hormone, which will then shut down further testosterone production.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2080.511

Likewise, if estrogens are going too high or they're going too high at various phases of the cycle, that can start to throw off various other hormones, including, FSH, progesterone, LH. The menstrual cycle itself is a just absolutely exquisite balance of feedback of luteinizing hormone kept low and constant, at least for the first 14 days of the cycle, then mid cycle, there's a peak.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

21.181

Before we begin today, just want to acknowledge that if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, I have a bandage on the left side of my face. I was trying to cook something for Costello and I, and I got burned, burned myself. It was a cooking accident. I'm fine. No need to dwell on it. We can move on. But I just wanted to let you know, everybody's going to be okay. He got a great meal.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2104.801

And that's typically when ovulation occurs. That's why pregnancy is most likely during the middle of the 28 day cycle.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2111.503

fsh kind of goes up and then down across the first 14 days so taking anything or really modifying one's estrogens or testosterone on that background of the menstrual cycle is really going to disrupt the way those things interact and it's just such an exquisite feedback loop so i'm not saying don't um do that but you definitely want to be aware of what you're doing and

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2134.705

Blood draws are one way to do that. Monitoring cycles for ovulating females is another way to do that. And in males, having a good window into what's going on with testosterone, DHT, aromatase, estradiol, LH, et cetera, is just vital.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

214.304

I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2149.799

And it's really part and parcel with the practice of thinking about optimizing these incredible things that we call sex steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. So once again, we covered a tremendous amount of information.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2162.349

I hope that you'll come away from this with a deeper mechanistic understanding of how the brain and body are interacting to control the output and the ways in which these incredible things that we call sex steroid hormones work and influence us. I hope you'll also come away with some ideas of things that you can do in particular behavioral practices

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2183.095

that can improve sleep and your relationship to light, et cetera, because those things really set the foundation, not just for healthy steroid hormone output, but for all sorts of health effects and for both the psychology and the biology of your nervous system.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

2201.906

In closing, I hope you'll leave today's episode with a much richer understanding of the mechanisms that control the endocrine and nervous system in the context of estrogen and testosterone, as well as take away various tools that you might choose to apply. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

229.734

is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

246.268

Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

262.319

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

282.168

It also has a snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

301.817

Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. So let's talk about competition because it turns out that competition is a powerful influence on the sex steroid hormones and the sex steroid hormones powerfully influence competition. So most people don't realize this, but most males of a given mammalian species never get to reproduce. In fact, they never even get to have sex at all.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

328.383

And we don't often think about that, but testosterone plays a powerful role in determining which members of a given species will get to reproduce, which ones of that species will actually get access to females. And so here, I'm not talking about humans specifically,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

345.06

but it's well known in species like elephant seals, in species like antlered animals and rams, for instance, that the higher levels of testosterone correlate with access to females. Now, one interpretation of this is that the females are detecting which males have high testosterone and selecting them.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

365.725

They're more receptive to them, but it's actually more so that the males that have higher testosterone forage further and will fight harder for the females. And this is really interesting because there's very good evidence now that testosterone can reduce anxiety, promote novelty seeking and promote competitive interactions.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

389.356

And so before you leap too far with this in your mind and think about all these human behaviors, just stay with me because there's a little bit of biology here that makes it all make sense. And it turns out to be pretty simple. We have a brain region called the amygdala. In Latin, that just means almond, but the amygdala is most famous for its role in fear.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

39.415

I got a burn and a great meal. Today, we're going to be talking about hormone optimization, and we're mainly going to be focusing on estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. Now, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives are what we call sex steroids. But I just want to emphasize that estrogen and testosterone are present in everybody. It's their ratios that determine their effects.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

407.183

We hear a lot about fear and the amygdala, but the amygdala is really involved in threat detection. It sets our thresholds for anxiety and what we consider scary or too much. Testosterone secreted from the gonads and elsewhere in the body binds to the amygdala and changes the threshold for stress.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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So I've said before on previous versions of this podcast and on other podcasts that testosterone has this incredible effect of making effort feel good. But what I was really referring to is the fact that testosterone lowers stress and anxiety in particular in males of a given species.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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Testosterone increases generally lead to more foraging, more novelty seeking, increases in libido and increases in desire to mate. So it is the case that increases in testosterone promote competitive and foraging type behaviors in humans and in non-human mammals. But it's also true that competition itself can increase androgens such as testosterone.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

473.183

Now, some people have come to the conclusion that if you win, your testosterone goes up, and if you lose, your testosterone goes down. And to some extent that's true, but that's not a direct effect on the gonads. That's actually mediated by the neuromodulator dopamine.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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We talked about dopamine in the episode on motivation and drive, and dopamine and testosterone have a remarkable interplay in the body. Dopamine is actually released in the brain in ways that has the pituitary, this gland that sits over the roof of your mouth, release certain hormones that then go on to promote the release of more testosterone.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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And indeed, winning promotes more dopamine and later more testosterone. However, in the short term, just competing increases testosterone independent of whether or not you win or lose. So testosterone is driving the seeking of sex and estrogen is promoting the actual act of sex from females, so-called receptivity, consensual receptivity.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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In males, it's interesting to point out that testosterone is promoting seeking of sex, but it's also estrogen in males that's important for libido. If estrogen levels are brought too low, then men will completely lose their libido. So it's not simply the case that high levels of testosterone produce a lot of sex and mating behavior and low levels of estrogen are good across the board.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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You actually need both in both males and females. It's just that in females, the testosterone levels are always going to be lower than the estrogen levels. And in males, the estrogen levels are always going to be lower than testosterone levels. So just as there are behaviors that can increase testosterone, there are behaviors that can decrease testosterone.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

574.089

And one of the most well-characterized ones in humans is becoming a parent. So expecting fathers, have an almost 50% decrease in testosterone levels, both free and bound testosterone. It turns out that these effects of reduced testosterone, increased estradiol and reduced cortisol can all be explained by an increase in prolactin.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

599.486

It is a well-known phenomenon that testosterone is going to drop, prolactin is going to increase, estradiol is going to increase in males and females that are expecting children. The other behavior that markedly reduces testosterone in both males and females and markedly reduces the desire for seeking sex and sex itself is illness.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

61.559

So today we're going to talk about how specific types of exercise, particular patterns of cold exposure, as well as particular patterns, believe it or not, of breathing can impact sex steroid hormones, both estrogen and testosterone. So one of the first things to understand if you want to optimize your hormones, is where they come from.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

621.179

And many of you might say, well, duh, when people feel sick, they don't feel like seeking out mates, they don't feel like having sex. But have you ever wondered why that actually is? Well, it turns out that it can be explained by the release of what are called inflammatory cytokines.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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So cytokines are related to the immune system, they travel in the lymph and in the blood, and they attack invader cells like bacteria and viruses. And under conditions of illness, we make a lot of different cytokines. Some of them are anti-inflammatory, but some of them are pro-inflammatory. And the best known example of a pro-inflammatory cytokine is IL-6.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

656.936

And it's known that IL-6, when injected into individuals, will decrease the desire for sex and eventually will reduce levels of testosterone and estrogen independent of feeling lousy. Now IL-6 doesn't just travel to the gonads and shut down the gonads.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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It actually has ways to interact with some of the receptors that the steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone bind to and impact those receptors so that the sex steroid hormones can't have their effect. In short and put simply, inflammatory cytokines like IL-6 are bad for sex steroid hormones.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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One of the main behaviors that's been shown to be associated with poor levels of estrogen relative to age match controls for people with ovaries or lower levels of testosterone compared to age match controls for people with testes. is apnea. So what is apnea? Apnea is under breathing or mainly cessation of breathing during sleep.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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So people are holding their breath and then they'll suddenly wake up. People who are dramatically overweight also suffer a lot from apnea during sleep. And it's well established that going into deep sleep and getting the proper patterns of slow wave sleep and REM sleep are important for hormone optimization.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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Breathing itself can be adjusted in the daytime waking hours in ways that can powerfully impact both sleep, reduce incidents of sleep apnea, and also help to optimize various hormones, even just by breathing in particular ways while awake. Believe it or not, being a nasal breather and avoiding being a mouth breather can actually positively impact hormones.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

759.848

And in particular, the hormones, testosterone and estrogen. Although the way that it does that is by making you a better sleeper, which allows you to produce more testosterone and the appropriate amounts of testosterone and estrogen.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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But it does that in part through indirect mechanisms because deep sleep supports the gonads, the ovaries and the testicles and the turnover of cells and the production of cells.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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Remember in the ovary particular cells and the egg follicles themselves make estrogen and in the testicle that the Sertoli cells and the Leydig cells are important for the formation of sperm and for testosterone respectively. So, What does this all mean?

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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This means we have to be breathing properly to get your breathing and sleep right so that your sleep can actually be deep enough and you're not entering apnea states. Getting proper sleep can really offset all the reductions in testosterone and estrogen and reductions in fertility that occur if we don't get enough sleep.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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There are a lot of different glands in the body that produce hormones. But when we're talking about the sex steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone, the major sources are ovaries for estrogen and the testes for testosterone, although the adrenals can also make testosterone. Now, there are also some enzymes. Enzymes are things that can change chemical composition.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

819.191

But seldom is it discussed how sleep actually adjusts things like testosterone and estrogen. And it does it by modifying cortisol. So the molecule cholesterol can be into testosterone or estrogen, but there's a competition whereby the cholesterol will turn into cortisol and not testosterone, or it'll turn into cortisol and not estrogen if stress levels are too high.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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So the simple version of this is getting your breathing right, during the waking hours, meaning primarily, unless you're working out really hard or there's some other reason why you're maybe eating or speaking that you need to be breathing through your mouth, you should be a nose breather. There's really good evidence for that now.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

863.32

And in sleep, you also want to be a nose breather because that's going to increase the amount of oxygen that you're bringing into your system and the amount of carbon dioxide that you're offloading, okay? So the simple version of this is get your breathing right. So how do you do that? How do you get your breathing right? Well, for some people that have severe sleep apnea,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

879.964

they're going to need the CPAP machine. This is a machine that you actually put on your face and it helps you breathe properly and sleep. In the daytime, the best way to get good at nasal breathing is to dilate the nasal passages, because a lot of people have a hard time breathing through their nose. And one way to do this is to just breathe through your nose more.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

897.38

And one way to do that is that when you exercise, in particular cardiovascular exercise, most of the time, provided you're not in maximum effort, you should be nasal breathing. Now for a lot of people, nasal breathing during exercise is hard at first, but as you do it, because the sinuses have a capacity to dilate over time, you'll get better at it. So my advice would be,

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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breathe through your nose while exercising unless you're in maximum effort. Pretty soon what you'll find is you actually can create more output than you would if you were breathing through your mouth. Learn to be a nasal breather, has positive cosmetic effects, it reduces apnea, it offloads more carbon dioxide, it increases lung capacity, it dilates the sinuses, and it prevents apnea in sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

942.409

So unless you have severe apnea and you need the CPAP, becoming a nasal breather can have all sorts of positive effects by reducing cortisol, reducing apnea, and indirectly raising testosterone and estrogen in the proper ratios. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.

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Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health, I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

0.249

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So we have this area of the brain called the thalamus, and it is getting bombarded with all sorts of sensory input all the time. But when I pay attention to something, I create a cone of attention. What we call signal to noise goes up. So those of you with an engineering background will be familiar with signal to noise. Those of you who do not have an engineering background, don't worry about it.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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All it means is that one particular shout in the crowd comes through. Acetylcholine acts as a spotlight. But epinephrine for alertness, acetylcholine spotlighting these inputs, those two things alone are not enough to get plasticity. There needs to be this third component. And the third component is acetylcholine released from an area of the forebrain called nucleus basalis.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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If you really want to get technical, it's called nucleus basalis of minorit. For any of you that are budding physicians or going to medical school, you should know that. If you have acetylcholine released from the brainstem, acetylcholine released from nucleus basalis and epinephrine, you can change your brain. And this has been shown again and again and again in a variety of papers.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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And that through your experience, what you were exposed to by your parents or other caretakers, through your social interactions, through your thoughts, through the languages that you learn, through the places you traveled or didn't travel, your nervous system became customized to your unique experience.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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And it is now considered a fundamental principle of how the nervous system works. If you can access these three things of epinephrine, acetylcholine from these two sources, not only will the nervous system change, it has to change. It absolutely will change. And that is the most important thing for people to understand if they want to change their brain.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So now let's talk about how we would translate all the scientific information into some protocols that you can actually apply, because I think that's what many of you are interested in. What you do with your health and your medical care is up to you. You're responsible for your health and wellbeing. So I'm not going to tell you what to do or what to take.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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I'm going to describe what the literature tells us and suggests about ways to access plasticity. We know we need epinephrine, that means alertness. Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee and a good night's sleep. So I will say you should master your sleep schedule and you should figure out how much sleep you need in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Once that's in place, the question then is, how do I access this alertness? Well, there are a number of ways. Some people use some pretty elaborate psychological gymnastics. They will tell people that they're going to do something and create some accountability. That could be really good.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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or they'll post a picture of themselves online and they'll commit to learning a certain amount, losing, excuse me, a certain amount of weight or something like this. So they can use either shame-based practices to potentially embarrass themselves if they don't follow through.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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They'll write checks to organizations that they hate and insist that they'll cash them if they don't actually follow through. Or they'll do it out of love. You know, they'll decide that they're going to run a marathon or learn a language or something because of somebody they love or they want to devote it to somebody.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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The truth is that from the standpoint of epinephrine and getting alert and activated, it doesn't really matter. Epinephrine is a chemical and your brain does not distinguish between doing things out of love or hate, anger or fear. It really doesn't. All of those promote autonomic arousal and the release of epinephrine.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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For most people, if you're feeling not motivated to make these changes, the key thing is to identify not just one, but probably a kit of reasons, several reasons as to why you would want to make this particular change and being drawn toward a particular goal. that you're excited about can be one.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Also being motivated to not be completely afraid, ashamed, or humiliated for not falling through on a goal is another. Come up with two or three things, fear-based perhaps, love-based perhaps, or perhaps several of those in order to ensure alertness, energy, and attention for the task. And that brings us to the attention part.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Now that's true for certain parts of your brain that are involved in what we call representations of the outside world. A lot of your brain is designed to represent the visual world or represent the auditory world or represent the gallery of smells that are possible in the world. However, there are aspects of your nervous system that were designed not to be plastic.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Now it's one thing to have an electrode embedded into your brain and increase the amount of acetylcholine. It's another to exist in the real world outside the laboratory and have trouble focusing, having trouble bringing your attention to a particular location in space for a particular event.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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And there's a lot of discussion nowadays about smartphones and devices creating a sort of attention deficit, almost at a clinical level for many people, including adults. I think that's largely true. And what it means, however, is that we all are responsible for learning how to create depth of focus. there are some important neuroscience principles to get depth of focus.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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I want to briefly talk about the pharmacology first, because I always get asked about this. People say, what can I take to increase my levels of acetylcholine? Well, there are things you can take. Nicotine is called nicotine because acetylcholine binds to the nicotinic receptor.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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There are two kinds of acetylcholine receptors, muscarinic and nicotinic, but the nicotinic ones are involved in attention and alertness. I have colleagues, these are not my kind of like bro science buddies, I have those friends too. This is a Nobel Prize winning colleague who chews Nicorette while he works. But when I asked him, why are you doing this?

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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He said, well, increases my alertness and focus. Now I've tried chewing Nicorette, it makes me super jittery. I don't like it because I can't focus very well. It kind of takes me too far up the level of autonomic arousal. I've got friends that dip Nicorette all day.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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If you're going to go down that route, you want to be very careful how much you rely on those all the time, because the essence of plasticity is to create a window of attention and focus that's distinct from the rest of your day. So what are some ways that you can increase acetylcholine? How do you increase focus? The best way to get better at focusing

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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is to use the mechanisms of focus that you were born with. And the key principle here is that mental focus follows visual focus. We are all familiar with the fact that our visual system can be unfocused, blurry, or jumping around, or we can be very laser focused on one location in space.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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What's interesting and vitally important to understanding how to access neuroplasticity is that you can use your visual focus and you can increase your visual focus as a way of increasing your mental focus abilities more broadly. So I'm going to explain how to do that. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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They were wired so that plasticity or changes in those circuits is very unlikely. Those circuits include things like the ones that control your heartbeat, the ones that control your breathing, the ones that control your digestion. And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Plasticity starts with alertness. That alertness can come from a sense of love, a sense of joy, a sense of fear, doesn't matter. There are pharmacologic ways to access alertness too. The most common one is of course caffeine. Many people are now also using Adderall. Adderall will not increase focus, it increases alertness.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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It does not touch the acetylcholine system. The acetylcholine system and the focus that it brings is available, as I mentioned, through pharmacology, but also through these behavioral practices. And the behavioral practices that are anchored in visual focus are going to be the ones that are going to allow you to develop great depth and duration of focus.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So let's think about visual focus for a second. When we focus on something visually, we have two options. We can either look at a very small region of space with a lot of detail and a lot of precision, or we can dilate our gaze and we can see big pieces of visual space with very little detail. It's a trade-off. We can't look at everything at high resolution.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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This is why we have these, the pupil more or less relates to the fovea of the eye, which is the area in which we have the most receptors, the highest density of receptors that perceive light. And so our acuity is much better in the center of our visual field than in our periphery. When we focus our eyes, we do a couple things. First of all,

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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We tend to do that in the center of our visual field and our two eyes tend to align in what's called a vergence eye movement towards a common point. The other thing that happens is the lens of our eye moves so that our brain now no longer sees the entire visual world, but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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That small cone of visual imagery or soda straw view of the world has much higher acuity, higher resolution than if I were to look at everything. Now you say, of course, this makes perfect sense, but that's about visual attention, not mental attention. Well, it turns out that focus in the brain is anchored to our visual system.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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I'll talk about blind people in a moment, but assuming that somebody is sighted, the key is to learn how to focus better visually if you want to bring about higher levels of cognitive or mental focus. When we move our eyes slightly inward, maybe you can tell that I'm doing it like this, basically shortening or making the interpupillary distance as it's called smaller, two things happen.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Not only do we develop a smaller visual window into the world, but we activate a set of neurons in our brainstem that trigger the release of both norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine. Norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrine.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So in other words, when our eyes are relaxed in our head, when we're just kind of looking at our entire visual environment, moving our head around, moving through space, we're in optic flow, things moving past us, or we're sitting still, we're looking broadly at our space, we're relaxed.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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When our eyes move slightly inward toward a particular visual target, our visual world shrinks, our level of visual focus goes up, and we know that this relates to the release of acetylcholine and epinephrine at the relevant sites in the brain for plasticity.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So many nervous system features like digestion and breathing and heart rate are hard to change. Other aspects of our nervous system are actually quite easy to change. And one of the great gifts of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is that we can learn through almost passive experience. We don't have to focus that hard in order to learn new things.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Now, what this means is that if you have a hard time focusing your mind for sake of reading or for listening, you need to practice and you can practice focusing your visual system. Now this works best if you practice focusing your visual system at the precise distance from the work that you intend to do for sake of plasticity. So how would this look in the real world?

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Let's say I am trying to concentrate on something related to, I don't know, science. I'm reading a science paper and I'm having a hard time. It's not absorbing.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Spending just 60 to 120 seconds, focusing my visual attention on a small window of my screen, meaning just on my screen with nothing on it, but bringing my eyes to that particular location increases not just my visual acuity for that location, but it brings about an increase in activity in a bunch of other brain areas that are associated with gathering information from this location.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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Today, we're talking about neural plasticity, which is this incredible feature of our nervous systems that allows it to change in response to experience. Neuroplasticity is arguably one of the most important aspects of our biology.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So put simply, if you want to improve your ability to focus, practice visual focus. Now you may ask, well, what about the experiment where people were feeling this rotating drum or listening to the auditory cue? That doesn't involve vision at all. Ah, if you look at people who are learning things with their auditory system, they will often close their eyes. And that's not a coincidence.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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If somebody is listening very hard, please don't ask them to look you directly in the eye while also asking that they listen to you. That's actually one of the worst ways to get somebody to listen to you. If you say, now listen to me and look me in the eye, the visual system will take over and they'll see your mouth move, but they're going to hear their thoughts more.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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They're going to hear what you're saying. Closing the eyes is one of the best ways to create a cone of auditory attention. And this is what low vision or no vision folks do. They have tremendous capacity to focus their attention in particular locations. And for most people, vision is the primary way to train up this focus ability and these cones of attention.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

1779.559

So you absolutely have to focus on the thing that you're trying to learn. And you will feel some agitation because of the epinephrine in your system. If you're feeling agitation and it's challenging to focus and you're feeling like you're not doing it right, chances are you're doing it right.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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So once you get this epinephrine, this alertness, you get the acetylcholine released and you can focus your attention, then the question is for how long? And in an earlier podcast, I talked about these ultradian cycles that last about 90 minutes. The typical learning bout should be about 90 minutes. I think that learning bout will no doubt include five to 10 minutes of warmup period.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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I think everyone should give themselves permission to not be fully focused in the early part of that bout, but that in the middle of that bout for the middle hour or so, you should be able to maintain focus for about an hour or so. So that for me means eliminating distractions. That means turning off the wifi. I put my phone in the other room.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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I encourage you to try experiencing what it is to be completely immersed in an activity where you feel the agitation that your attention is drifting, but you continually bring it back. And that's an important point, which is that attention drifts, but we have to re-anchor it. We have to keep grabbing it back. And the way to do that, if you're sighted, is with your eyes.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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And then after age 25, if we want to change those connections, those super highways of connectivity, we have to engage in some very specific processes And those processes, as we'll soon learn, are gated, meaning you can't just decide to change your brain. You actually have to go through a series of steps to change your internal state in ways that will allow you to change your brain.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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That as your attention drifts and you look away, you want to try and literally maintain visual focus on the thing that you're trying to learn. That's the trigger for plasticity. But the real secret is that neuroplasticity doesn't occur during wakefulness. It occurs during sleep. We now know that if you focus very hard on something,

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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for about 90 minutes or so, maybe you even do several bouts of that per day if you can do that. Some people can, some people can only do one focused bout of learning.

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Essentials: How to Focus to Change Your Brain

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That night and the following nights while you sleep, the neural circuits that were highlighted, if you will, with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen and other ones will be lost, which is wonderful because that's the essence of plasticity. And what it means is that when you eventually wake up

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or a week later, you will have acquired the knowledge forever, unless you go through some process to actively unlearn it. So mastering sleep is key in order to reinforce the learning that occurs. But let's say you get a really poor night of sleep after a bout of learning. Chances are, if you sleep the next night or the following night, that learning will occur.

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There's a stamp in the brain where this acetylcholine was released. It actually marks those synapses neurochemically and metabolically so that those synapses are more biased to change. Now, if you don't ever get that deep sleep, then you probably won't get those changes.

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There's also a way in which you can bypass the need for deep sleep, at least partially, by engaging in what I call non-sleep deep rest, these NSDR protocols. But I just want to discuss the science of this. There was a paper that was published

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in cell reports last year that shows that if people did, it was a spatial memory task, actually quite difficult one where they had to remember the sequence of lights lighting up. And if they're just two or three lights in a particular sequence, it's easy, but as you get up to 15 or 16 lights and numbers in the sequence, it actually gets quite challenging. If immediately after,

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and it was immediately after the learning, the actual performance of this task, people took a 20 minute non-sleep deep rest protocol or took a shallow nap, so lying down, feet slightly elevated perhaps, just closing their eyes, no sensory input. the rates of learning were significantly higher for that information than were to just had a good night's sleep the following night.

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So you can actually accelerate learning with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps, 90 minutes or less. For many people, letting the mind drift where it's not organized in thought after a period of very deliberate focused effort is the best way to accelerate learning and depth of learning. I want to synthesize some of the information that we've covered up until now.

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Today, I want to make sure that these key elements that form the backbone of neuroplasticity are really embedded in people's minds. First of all, plasticity occurs throughout the lifespan. If you want to learn as an adult, you have to be alert. It might seem so obvious, but I think a lot of people don't think about when in their 24 hour cycle they're most alert.

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Just ask yourself, when during the day do you typically tend to be most alert? That will afford you an advantage in learning specific things during that period of time. So don't give up that period of time for things that are meaningless, useless, or not aligned with your goals. That epinephrine released from your brainstem,

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is going to occur more readily at particular phases of your 24-hour cycle than others, during the waking phase, of course. You should know when those are. Increasing acetylcholine can be accomplished pharmacologically through nicotine. However, there are certain dangers for many people to do that, as well as a cost, a financial cost.

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.

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learning how to engage the cholinergic system through the use of the visual system, practicing how long can you maintain focus with blanks as you need them, but how long can you maintain visual focus on a target just on a piece of paper set a few feet away in the room or at the level of your computer screen?

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These are actually things that people do in communities where high levels of visual focus are necessary. What we're really talking about here is trying to harness the mechanisms of attention and get better at paying attention.

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You may want to do that with your auditory system, not with your visual system, either because you're low vision or no vision, or because you're trying to learn something that relates more to sounds. You should also ask yourself whether or not you're trying to focus too much for too long during the day. I know some very high performing individuals

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very high performing in a variety of contexts, and none of them are focused all day long. Many of them take walks down the hallway, sometimes mumbling to themselves or not paying attention to anything else. They go for bike rides, they take walks. They are not trying to engage their mind at maximum focus all the time.

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Very few people do that because we learn best in these 90 minute bouts inside of one of these ultradian cycles. And I should repeat again that within that 90 minute cycle, you should not expect yourself to focus for the entire period of one 90 minute cycle. The beginning and end are going to be a little bit flickering in and out of focus. How do you know when one of these 90 minute cycles is

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Well, typically when you wake up is the beginning of the first 90 minute cycle, but it's not down to the minute. You'll be able to tap into your sense of these 90 minute cycles as you start to engage in these learning practices, should you choose. And then of course, getting some non-sleep deep rest or just deliberate disengagement, such as walking or running or just sitting

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eyes closed or eyes open kind of mindlessly, it might seem in a chair, just letting your thoughts move around after a learning about will accelerate the rate of plasticity. And then of course, deep sleep. Many of you have very graciously asked how you can help support the Huberman Lab podcast. Best way to do that is to subscribe on YouTube.

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You might want to also hit the notification button so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Leave a comment. As well, if you go to Apple, you can give us a five-star rating and there's a place there where also you can leave a comment. And if you prefer to listen on Spotify, subscribe and download on Spotify.

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In addition, it's always helpful if you recommend the podcast to your friends and family and others who you think might benefit from the information. And as well, please check out our sponsors. That's a great way to help us. Thanks so much for your time and attention. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.

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However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.

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And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.

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If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Many of us have been captivated by the stories in the popular press about the addition of new neurons, this idea, oh, if you go running or you exercise, your brain actually makes new neurons.

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Well, I'm going to give you the bad news, which is that after puberty, the human brain and nervous system adds very few, if any, new neurons.

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So even though we can't add new neurons throughout our lifespan, at least not in very great numbers, it's clear that we can change our nervous system, that the nervous system is available for change, that if we create the right set of circumstances in our brain, chemical circumstances, and if we create the right environmental circumstances around us, our nervous system will shift into a mode in which change isn't just possible, but it's probable.

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It holds the promise for each and all of us to think differently, to learn new things, to forget painful experiences, and to essentially adapt to anything that life brings us by becoming better. So let's get started. Most people are familiar with the word neural plasticity, which is the brain and nervous system's ability to change itself.

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As I mentioned before, The hallmark of the child nervous system is change. It wants to change. One of the ways in which we can all get plasticity at any stage throughout the lifespan is through deficits and impairments in what we call our sensory apparatus, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth.

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In individuals that are blind from birth, the so-called occipital cortex, the visual cortex in the back, becomes overtaken by hearing. the neurons there will start to respond to sounds as well as braille touch. And actually there's a one particularly tragic incident where a woman who was blind since birth and because of neuroimaging studies, we knew her visual cortex was no longer visual.

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It was responsible for braille reading and for hearing. She had a stroke that actually took out most of the function of her visual cortex. So then she was blind. She couldn't braille read or hear. She did recover some aspect of function. Now, most people, they don't end up in that highly unfortunate situation. And what we know is that for instance, blind people,

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who use their visual cortex for braille reading and for hearing have much better auditory acuity and touch acuity, meaning they can sense things with their fingers and they can sense things with their hearing that typical sighted folks wouldn't be able to. In fact, you will find a much greater incidence of perfect pitch in people that are blind.

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And that tells us that the brain, and in particular, this area we call the neocortex, which is the outer part, is really designed to be a map of our own individual experience.

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So these, what I call experiments of impairment or loss, where somebody is blind from birth or deaf from birth, or maybe has a limb development impairment where they have a stump instead of an entire limb with a functioning hand, their brain will represent the body plan that they have, not some other body plan.

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But the beauty of the situation is that the real estate up in the skull, that neocortex, the essence of it is to be a customized map of experience. A few years ago, I was at a course and a woman came up to me and she said, you know, I wasn't teaching the course, I was in the course. And she said, I just have to tell you that every time you speak, it really stresses me out.

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And I said, well, I've heard that before, but do you want to be more specific? And she said, yeah, your tone of voice reminds me of somebody that I had a really terrible experience with. I said, well, okay, well, I can't change my voice, but I really appreciate that you acknowledge that. And it also will help explain why you seem to cringe every time I speak, which I hadn't noticed until then.

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But after that, I did notice she had a very immediate and kind of visceral response to my speech. But in any event, over the period of this two week course, she would come back every once in a while and say, you know what, I think just by telling you that your voice was really difficult for me to listen to, it's actually becoming more tolerable to me.

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And by the end, we actually became pretty good friends and we're still in touch. And so what this says is that the recognition

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of something whether or not that's an emotional thing or a desire to learn something else is actually the first step in neural plasticity if i get up out of this chair and walk out of the door i don't think about each step that i'm taking and that's because i learned how to walk during development but when we decide that we're going to shift some sort of behavior or some reaction or some new piece of information that we want to learn is something that we want to bring into our consciousness that awareness

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is a remarkable thing because it cues the brain and the rest of the nervous system that when we engage in those reflexive actions going forward, that those reflexive actions are no longer fated to be reflexive. Now, if this sounds a little bit abstract, we're going to talk about protocols for how to do this. The first step in neuroplasticity is recognizing that you want to change something.

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All of us were born with a nervous system that isn't just capable of change, but was designed to change. When we enter the world, Our nervous system is primed for learning. The brain and nervous system of a baby is wired very crudely. The connections are not precise. And we can see evidence of that in the fact that babies are kind of flopping there like a kind of a little potato bug with limbs.

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We have to know what it is exactly that we want to change. Or if we don't know exactly what it is that we want to change, we at least have to know that we want to change something about some specific experience. Now, there are specific protocols that science tells us we have to follow if we want those changes to occur. What it is is it's our forebrain, in particular, our prefrontal cortex signaling

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the rest of our nervous system that something that we're about to do, hear, feel, or experience is worth paying attention to. So we'll pause there, and then I'm going to move forward. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.

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The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

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For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.

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These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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One of the biggest lies in the universe that seems quite prominent right now is that every experience you have changes your brain. People love to say this. They love to say, your brain is going to be different after this lecture or that your brain is going to be different after today's class than it was two days ago. And that's absolutely not true.

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The nervous system doesn't just change because you experienced something unless you're a very young child. The nervous system changes when certain neurochemicals are released and allow whatever neurons are active in the period in which those chemicals are swimming around to strengthen or weaken the connections of those neurons.

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So when people tell you, oh, at the end of today's lecture, at the end of something, your brain is going to be completely different. That's simply not true. If you're older than 25, your brain will not change unless there's a selective shift in your attention or a selective shift in your experience that tells the brain it's time to change.

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And those changes occur through strengthening and weakening of particular connections. The important thing to understand is that if we want something to change, we really need to bring an immense amount of attention to whatever it is that we want to change. This is very much linked to the statement I made earlier about the, it all starts with an awareness. Now, why is that attention important?

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In the early nineties, a graduate student by the name of Greg Reckenzone was in the laboratory of a guy named Mike Merzenich at UCSF. And they set out to test this idea that if one wants to change their brain, they need to do it early in life because the adult brain simply isn't plastic. It's not available for these changes. And they did a series of absolutely beautiful experiments

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By now, I think we can say proving that the adult brain can change provided certain conditions are met. Now, the experiments they did are tough. They were tough on the experimenter and they were tough on the subject. I'll just describe one. Let's say you were a subject in one of their experiments.

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You would come into the lab and you'd sit down at a table and they would record from or image your brain and look at the representation of your fingers, the digits as we call them. and there would be a spinning drum, literally like a stone drum in front of you or metal drum that had little bumps. Some of the bumps were spaced close together, some of them were spaced far apart.

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And they would do these experiments where they would expect their subjects to, whenever, for instance, the bumps got closer together or further apart. And these were very subtle differences. So in order to do this, you really have to pay attention to the distance between the bumps. And these were not braille readers or anyone skilled in doing these kinds of experiments.

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What they found was that as people paid more and more attention to the distance between these bumps, and they would signal when there was a change by pressing a lever, As they did that, there was very rapid changes, plasticity in the representation of the fingers. And it could go in either direction.

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They can't really do much in terms of coordinated movement. They certainly can't speak. And they can't really do anything with precision. So I want you to imagine in your mind that when you were brought into this world, you were essentially a widely connected web of connections that was really poor at doing any one thing.

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You could get people very good at detecting the distance between bumps that the distance was getting smaller or the distance was getting greater. So people could get very good at these tasks that you're kind of hard to imagine how they would translate to the real world for a non-Braille reader. But what it told us is that these maps of touch were very much available for plasticity.

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And these were fully adult subjects. What it proved is that the adult brain is very plastic. And they did some beautiful control experiments that are important for everyone to understand, which is that sometimes they would bring people in and they would have them touch the on this spinning drum, but they would have the person pay attention to an auditory cue.

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Every time a tone would go off or there was a shift in the pitch of that tone, they would have to signal that. So the subject thought they were doing something related to touch and hearing. And all that showed was that it wasn't just the mere action of touching these bumps. they had to pay attention to the bumps themselves.

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If they were placing their attention on the auditory cue, on the tone, well, then there was plasticity in the auditory portion of the brain, but not on the touch portion of the brain. And this really spits in the face of this thing that you hear so often, which is every experience that you have is going to change the way your brain works. Absolutely not.

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The experiences that you pay super careful attention to are what open up plasticity. And it opens up plasticity to that specific experience. So the question then is why? And Merzenich and his graduate students and postdocs went on to address this question of why. And it turns out the answer is a very straightforward neurochemical answer. And the first neurochemical is epinephrine, also adrenaline.

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We call it adrenaline when it's released from the adrenal glands above our kidneys. That's in the body. We call it epinephrine in the brain, but they are chemically identical substances. Epinephrine is released from a region in the brainstem called locus coeruleus. Epinephrine is released when we pay attention. and when we are alert.

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But the most important thing for getting plasticity is that there'll be epinephrine, which equates to alertness, plus the release of this neuromodulator acetylcholine. Now, acetylcholine is released from two sites in the brain.

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One is also in the brainstem, and it's named different things in different animals, but in humans, the most rich site of acetylcholine neurons or neurons that make acetylcholine is the parabigeminal nucleus, or the parabrachial region. All you need to know is that you have an area in your brain stem, and that area sends wires, these axons, up into the area of the brain that filters sensory input.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.

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Essentials: Boost Your Energy & Immune System with Cortisol & Adrenaline

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Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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So if all these protocols, all these activities are just equivalent, they're just stress, then how do we make them good for us? How do we actually benefit from them? Now, of course, the cold itself can have some health-promoting effects. It can increase brown fat thermogenesis and metabolism.

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So understand that cholesterol is a precursor molecule, meaning it's the substrate from which a lot of things like testosterone and estrogen are made. please also understand that cholesterol can be made into estrogen or testosterone or cortisol, and that cortisol is sort of the competitive partner to estrogen and testosterone.

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High-intensity interval training or other forms of exercise, of course, has cardiovascular effects that can be good for us, as does weight training, et cetera. But what we're talking about here are ways to increase energy and to teach our brain and body, to teach ourselves how to regulate the stress response.

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So in addition to the benefits of the actual practices, what we're talking about is building a system so that when you experience increases in epinephrine and cortisol from life events, you're able to better buffer those. And we are also talking about ways that you can increase energy overall, because that's what today's episode is all about, energy and the immune system.

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There's a biological mechanism that's very important if you want to do those things, increase energy and your immune system on demand, learn to buffer stress on demand in real time. And it means taking these protocols, these practices, whether or not it's cold water or ice bath or exercise or any of those and making one small but very powerful adjustment in how you perform them.

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But in order to make that adjustment, I can't just tell you the adjustment. I have to tell you the mechanism so that you know if you're doing it correctly or not. This is really a case where if you can understand a little bit of mechanism, you will be far better off than just adopting protocols. Cortisol, as I mentioned, is released from the adrenals.

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It can have action both in the body and in the brain. Cortisol can cross the blood brain barrier. Epinephrine cannot. That's one of the reasons why it's released both from the adrenals in your body and released from this brainstem area, the locus coeruleus in your brain. That's a powerful thing because what it means is that

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The body can enter states of readiness and alertness while the mind remains calm. So I'm presuming at this point that you're getting your morning light to time your cortisol increase. I'm presuming that you want more energy or that you want to increase your immune system's function and its ability to combat infections of various kinds.

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Now, the simplest way to describe how to do that would be in the context of cold water or a breathing protocol. Let's presume cold water. So let's say you decide you're going to take a cold shower. You get into the cold shower, and if it's cold enough, that will be stressful. You will experience an increase in epinephrine. It will increase your alertness.

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Now you're using this as a practice, as a tool to build, you could call it resilience, but the ability to stay calm in the mind while being stressed in the body, epinephrine's in the body. And you do that by subjectively trying to calm yourself.

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Now you can do that by telling yourself it's good for you, by emphasizing your exhales, anything that you can do to try and stay calm, despite the fact that you are in a heightened state of alertness.

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You could do this with exercise, you could do this with music, pretty much anything that will give you a really heightened state of alertness offers you the opportunity to try and stay calm in the mind. What you're trying to do at a mechanistic level is to have adrenaline released from the adrenals, but not have adrenaline epinephrine released from the brainstem to the same degree.

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So you're not just trying to buffer this. You're not trying to say, oh, this is good for me. This is good for me. I'm going to grind this out. You're not trying to grind it out. You're trying to move through this calmly while maintaining alertness. In the immediate period following that practice, your system, your entire brain and body are different.

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What this means is no matter how much cholesterol you're eating or you produce, whether or not it's low or it's high, if you are stressed, more of that cholesterol is going to be devoted toward creating cortisol, which is indeed a stress hormone. However, the word stress shouldn't stress you out because you need cortisol. Cortisol is vital. You don't want your cortisol levels to be too low.

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your body is actually primed to resist infection when you have high levels of epinephrine in it for short periods of time. So the scientific study that explored how increasing adrenaline in the body can improve immune resistance is grounded in a well-known phenomenon that increases in stress actually protect you against infection in the short term.

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So I want to look at the classic data first, describe what was done, and then I want to talk about the more recent study, which is immediately actionable. There are classic set of studies that are really based mainly on the work of somebody named Bruce McEwen, who was at the Rockefeller University in New York.

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I'm not going to go through all the details of the study, but essentially what they were doing was exposing subjects to some sort of infection, either bacterial or viral infection and inducing stress. Sounds like a double whammy, right?

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You'd think that maybe getting a little electric foot shock or cold water exposure or something to increase your levels of stress and adrenaline would just make the effects of the infection worse, but no, quite the opposite. brief bouts of stress, which now you should be thinking about in terms of cortisol and epinephrine release, were actually able to increase immune system function.

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The duration here is really important because if stress stayed too high for too long, then yes, indeed, stress can hinder the immune response. But for a period of about one to four days, it actually can protect you by way of increasing the immune response. There's a human study that I definitely want to point out to you because it was published more recently than the McEwen work.

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The title of the paper is Voluntary Activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System. That's the system that causes fight or flight and AKA stress. This is Cox, K-O-X et al, P-N-A-S, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014. And they incorporate the ever famous Wim Hof breathing. Here's what they did.

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they injected people with E. coli and they had groups that either did the sorts of breathing I've been describing that increased adrenaline release. Although I should say, I don't think you need that breathing to get adrenaline release. You could do it with cold exposure. You could do it with other things, high intensity interval training as well. And what they found was that the, the,

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The response to the E. coli was quite different in the people that had a protocol, in this case breathing, to increase adrenaline. So this is a remarkable study because what they found was that the fever, the vomiting, all the negative effects of E. coli, many of them, and in some cases all of them, were greatly attenuated by way of engaging the adrenaline system.

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The point is you can control your immune system by finding a way that you can increase adrenaline. And this runs counter to what we always hear, which is don't get too stressed or you will get sick. Learn to control adrenaline, turn it on and turn it off. Learn to control cortisol, turn it on with light in the morning, try and turn it off.

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And then when it spikes because of life events, learn to turn it off. Learning to turn on and off adrenaline, AKA epinephrine, and learning to turn on and off cortisol affords you the ability to turn on energy and focus in your immune system. That's the most important point from today's podcast. And understanding that it doesn't matter what protocol you use.

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Maybe it's a cup of coffee and running up a hill five or six times. That will improve your immune system function if you get adrenaline in your system. You can use an ice bath, you can use a cold bath. It really doesn't matter. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.

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Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.

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It's very important for immune system function, for memory, for not getting depressed. You just don't want your cortisol levels to be too high and you don't want them to be elevated even to normal levels at the wrong time of day. epinephrine or adrenaline has also been demonized a bit. We think of it as the stress hormone, this thing that makes us anxious, fight or flight.

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They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.

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For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

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that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So up until now, we've been talking about increasing energy and increasing the immune system by way of cortisol and epinephrine, but I'd be totally remiss if I didn't cover how cortisol and epinephrine if chronically elevated or if elevated too high, can have a lot of detrimental effects.

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your immune system over time will get battered and you won't be able to fight infection off as well, right? You can start laying down the sort of classic pattern of cortisol induced body fat. Why do we seek high fat and or high sugar foods when we are stressed for a while? Why would that be? And the reason is that the so-called glucocorticoids of which cortisol is a glucocorticoid

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It's caused, as we've mentioned before, by releasing hormones from the brain and ACTH from the pituitary, et cetera. But normally high levels of glucocorticoid shut off the releasing hormones in the brain and in the pituitary. They shut down in a so-called negative feedback loop.

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Chronic stress, however, stress that lasts more than four to seven days causes changes in the feedback loop between the adrenals and the brain and the pituitary such that now the brain and the pituitary respond to high levels of glucocorticoids, cortisol, by releasing more of them. It becomes a positive feedback loop. And that's bad. It's a cascade of stress equals more stress equals more stress.

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So this is why it's very important to learn to turn off the stress response. So there's one study that Dahlman and her colleagues did where they stimulate chronic stress by increasing corticosterone, cortisol. And they found that subjects would increase their consumption of sugar and fat. In fact, they would even eat lard. And that led to all sorts of things like type two diabetes,

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dysfunction in the adrenal output, et cetera. And so the real key is to learn to shut off the stress response. And you should watch yourself next time you experience stress. If it's a short-term bout of stress, typically it blocks hunger. If it's a longer bout of stress, typically it triggers hunger in particular for these so-called comfort foods, sugary and fatty foods.

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The fact of the matter is that epinephrine is your best friend when it comes to your immunity, when it comes to protecting you from infection. And epinephrine, adrenaline, is your best friend when it comes to remembering things and learning and activating neuroplasticity. We're going to talk about that as well.

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Other bad effects of stress is that yes, indeed, stress can make you go gray. Pigmentation of hair, just like pigmentation of skin, is controlled by melanocytes. Well, it turns out

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that activation of the so-called sympathetic nervous system, which is really just another name for the system that liberates adrenaline from the adrenals and epinephrine in the brain, drives depletion of melanocytes in hair stem cells. So indeed there's a rate of aging that we will undergo based on our genetics, but stress will make us go gray.

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How do I know the difference between chronic and acute stress and how do I keep chronic stress at bay? Once again, getting your light and your feeding and your exercise and your sleep on a consistent schedule or consistent-ish is going to be the most powerful thing you can do in order to buffer yourself against negative effects on mental health and physical health for that matter.

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There are things that one can take, supplements, prescription drugs, et cetera. All supplements, of course, have to be checked out for their safety margins for you because they're going to differ from person to person. You're responsible for making sure they're safe for you if you decide to use them. One of the most common ones is ashwagandha. it has a very strong effect on cortisol itself.

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How strong? The decrease in cortisol node in humans is 14.5 to 27.9% reduction in otherwise healthy but stressed humans. The other compound that I think deserves attention is apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, apigenin, which is what's found in chamomile. I take it before bedtime, 50 milligrams. The major source of action is to calm the nervous system.

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And it does that primarily by adjusting things like GABA and chloride channels, but also has a mild effect in reducing cortisol. So ashwagandha and apigenin together sort of, I would consider the most potent

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commercial compounds that are in supplement non-prescription form that one could use if they were interested in reducing chronic stress, especially late in the day by way of reducing cortisol late in the day. So you're probably getting the impression that cortisol and epinephrine are a bit of a double-edged sword. You want them elevated, but not for too long or too much.

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You don't want them up for days and days and days, but you do want to have a practice in order to increase them in the short term. we should talk about protocols that can set a foundation of cortisol and epinephrine that is headed towards optimal. Optimization is always going to be a series of regular practices that you do every day.

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So sleeping at certain times, light at specific times, food at specific times, certain foods, et cetera. And that's highly individual, but there are some universals and we've covered a number of those in the discussion today. Meal timing. Meal schedules has a profound effect on energy levels. And as I mentioned before, the energy I'm referring to is not glucose energy.

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Once again, it's a question of how much and how long and the specific timing of release of cortisol and epinephrine, as opposed to cortisol and adrenaline being good or bad. They're terrific when they're regulated. They are terrible when they're misregulated. And we will give you lots of tools to regulate them better. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, BetterHelp.

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It's what I'm talking about is neural energy, epinephrine and cortisol. Fasting and timing one's eating are two sides of the same coin. When our blood glucose is low, cortisol and epinephrine are going to go up. Anytime we haven't eaten for four to six hours, levels of epinephrine and cortisol are going to go up pretty substantially.

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One thing that many people do to great benefit is they follow a so-called circadian eating schedule. They eat only when the sun is up, they stop when the sun is down, more or less.

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The other way to think about this is they stop eating a couple hours before sleep and they eat more or less upon waking, assuming that they're waking up more or less around the time the sun rises, maybe plus or minus two hours. Now, let's say you decide to do what I do, which is I skip breakfast. I drink water, I delay my caffeine for 90 minutes to two hours, and then I drink my caffeine.

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And then my first meal is typically around lunchtime, 11.30 or 12. So I've got a cortisol increase. I've got my sunlight in the morning. So I'm getting a big pulse and energy early in the day. And yes, there's a little bit of agitation. I am hungry sometimes early in the day, sometimes no, but my ghrelin system is used to kicking in right around noon.

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At the point where I eat, as long as I don't eat carbohydrate, in my case, I know that my epinephrine levels are going to stay pretty high. So for me, it's usually meat and salad or something of that sort or fish and salad. So fasting is a tool for many reasons can increase growth hormone, et cetera.

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But today I'm talking about fasting as a tool to bias your system toward more epinephrine adrenaline release and toward more cortisol release, but still low enough that it's not chronic stress, that it's not causing negative health effects. One has to learn how to regulate these hormones with behavior, with nutrition, perhaps with supplementation.

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I also want to mention again that I think there's great benefit to having a practice that perhaps you do every other day, but if you can't, maybe every third day or every other day of deliberately increasing your adrenaline in your body while learning to stay calm in the mind so that you learn to separate the brain body experience.

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The idea is to stay calm in your mind so that then you can regulate your action. So once again, we've covered a ton of material. I hope right now you're thinking, okay, am I in a state of chronic stress? Am I under activated? Or could I afford to increase my levels of adrenaline cortisol to improve my relationship to my immune system and to energy, neural energy?

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to focus on how particular hormones influence our energy levels and our immune system. We're going to talk about the hormones cortisol and epinephrine, also called adrenaline.

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And I hope that you'll think about some of the ways in which cortisol and adrenaline are not good or bad, that stress isn't good or bad, but short-term stress is healthy. Alertness and energy is healthy, even if it puts you at the edge of agitation. That's an opportunity to learn how to control these hormones better.

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And I hope that if you're in a state of chronic stress, that you'll do things to start tamping down some of that stress and that you realize that your nervous system and your hormone system are linked, but they're linked in ways that you can control, that we don't have to be slaves to our hormones and certainly not the hormones that cause us stress.

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We can learn to control those both to the benefit of our body and benefit of mind. Thank you for joining me for what I hope was an informative discussion and an actionable discussion about how to increase energy and the immune system by way of cortisol and adrenaline, epinephrine.

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I really appreciate your willingness to learn new topics as well as to embrace and think about new tools and whether or not they're right for you. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.

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In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.

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Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.

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Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman. For this month only, March 2025, BetterHelp is giving you the biggest discount offered on this show with 90% off your first week of therapy. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 90% off your first week.

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Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance.

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It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element.

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They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free sample pack. Cortisol Biology 101 in less than two minutes.

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Your brain makes what we call releasing hormones. And in this case, there's corticotropin releasing hormone. CRH is made by neurons in your brain. It causes the pituitary, this gland that sits about an inch in front of the roof of your mouth and the base of your brain to release ACTH.

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ACTH then goes and causes your adrenals, which sit above your kidneys and your lower back, to release cortisol, a so-called stress hormone. But I would like you to think about cortisol not as a stress hormone, but as a hormone of energy. It produces a situation in the brain and body whereby you want to move, and whereby you don't want to rest and whereby you don't want to eat, at least at first.

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If you're somebody who has challenges with sleep or you're somebody who has challenges getting your energy level up throughout the day and getting your energy level down when you want to sleep, today's episode is also for you. And we're going to talk about the immune system and how to enhance the function of your immune system.

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Epinephrine or adrenaline 101 in less than two minutes. When you sense a stressor with your mind or your body senses a stressor, excuse me, from a wound or something of that sort, a signal is sent to neurons that are in the middle of your body. They're called the sympathetic chain ganglia. The name doesn't necessarily matter. They release norepinephrine very quickly.

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It's almost like a sprinkler system that just hoses your body with That will increase heart rate, will increase breathing rate. It will also increase the size of vessels and arteries that are giving blood flow to your vital organs. You also release adrenaline from your adrenals. Again, riding atop your kidneys.

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And you release it from an area of your brain called locus coeruleus, and that creates alertness in your brain. Okay, so we have cortisol and we have epinephrine and their net effect is to increase energy. So the first tool is to make sure that your highest levels of cortisol are first thing in the morning when you wake up. One way or another, every 24 hours, you will get an increase in cortisol.

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It's to stimulate movement from being asleep, presumably horizontal, to getting up and starting to move about your day. The best way to stimulate that increase in cortisol at the appropriate time is that very soon after waking, within 30 minutes or so after waking, get outside, view some sunlight. Even if it's overcast, get outside, view some sunlight, no sunglasses.

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Do that because in the early part of the day, you have the opportunity to time that cortisol release to the early part of the day. It will improve your focus, it will improve your energy levels, and it will improve your learning throughout the day. So here's how it works. On a sunny day, so no cloud cover,

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provided that the sun is not yet overhead, it's somewhere low in the sky, could have just crossed the horizon, or if you wake up a little bit later, it could be somewhat low in the sky. Basically the intensity of light, the brightness, is somewhere around 100,000 lux. Lux is just a measurement of brightness. On a cloudy day, it's about 10,000 lux. So tenfold reduction.

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But bright artificial light, very bright artificial light, is somewhere around 1,000 lux. And ordinary room light is somewhere around 100 to 200 lux. So even if you have a very bright bulb sitting right next to you, that's not going to do the job. Your phone will not do the job, not early in the day. To get the cortisol released at the appropriate time, you need to get outside.

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I think it's fair to say that most people would like to have a lot of energy during the day, if you work during the day, and they'd like their energy to taper off at night. And I think it's fair to say that most people don't enjoy being sick. And it turns out that the two hormones that dominate those processes of having enough energy and having a healthy immune system are cortisol and epinephrine.

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So let's just set a couple general parameters. If it's bright outside and no cloud cover, get outside for 10 minutes. If it's a cloudy day, dense overcast, you're probably going to need about 30 minutes. If it's light cloud, broken cloud cover, it's probably going to be somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes.

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This is why it's vital to get this light on a regular basis to get that cortisol released early in the day. That sets you up for optimal levels of energy. Now, throughout the day, you're going to experience different things. Most of you are not spending your entire day trying to optimize your health. Some of you might be, but most of you have jobs and you have families and you have commitments.

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Life enters the picture and provides you stressors. Those will cause increases in cortisol and epinephrine. The key is these blips in cortisol and epinephrine need to be brief. You can't have them so often or lasting so long that you are in a state of chronic cortisol elevation or chronic epinephrine elevation.

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This system of stress was designed to increase your alertness and mobilize you towards things, get you frustrated and provide the opportunity to change behavior. And the reason it works is that cortisol when it's released into the bloodstream, it actually can bind to receptors in the brain.

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It can bind receptors in the amygdala, fear centers and threat detection centers, but also areas of the brain that are involved in learning and memory and neuroplasticity. And this is why I say that neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience, is first stimulated by attention and focus and often a low level state of agitation.

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So understand that and you won't be quite so troubled about the little stress increases that you experience throughout the day. Now, there are ways to leverage stress, epinephrine and cortisol in ways that serve you and to do it in a deliberate way.

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There are also ways to do that that increase your level of stress threshold, meaning they make it less likely that epinephrine and cortisol will be released. So I want to talk about the science of those practices because I get asked about these practices a lot. Things like Wim Hof breathing, which is also called TUMO breathing, things like ice baths, things like high intensity interval training.

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All of those things have utility. The question is how you use them and how often you use them. Those tools, just like stress from a life event, can either enhance your immunity or deplete it. That's right. Those same practices of ice baths, tummo breathing, high intensity interval training or training of any kind can deplete your immune system or it can improve them.

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Excuse me, they can improve it, meaning they can improve your immune system. The key is how often you use them and when. And so I want to review that now in light of the scientific literature, because in doing that, you can build practices into your daily or maybe every other day routine that can really help buffer you against unhealthy,

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of cortisol and epinephrine, meaning cortisol increases that are much too great or that last much too long. Epinephrine increases that are much too great or that last much too long. Let's say somebody tells you something very troubling, or you look at your phone and you see a text message that's really upsetting to you.

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That will cause an immediate increase in epinephrine, adrenaline in your brain and body. And chances are it's going to increase your levels of cortisol as well. Let's say you get into an ice bath or a cold shower. That will cause an equivalent increase in epinephrine and cortisol.

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let's say you go out for high intensity interval training, you decide you're going to run some sprints, you do some repeats, or you're going to do some weightlifting in the gym, or you decide that you want to do some hot yoga, you're going to increase your epinephrine and cortisol levels. And guess what? They increase your levels of energy and alertness.

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I just want to cover a little bit about what cortisol and epinephrine are, where they are released in the body and brain, because if you can understand that, you will understand better how to control them. First of all, cortisol is a steroid hormone, much like estrogen and testosterone in that it is derived from cholesterol.

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So if you're somebody who struggles with energy and alertness, It can be beneficial, provided you get clearance from your doctor, to have some sort of protocol built into your day where you deliberately increase your levels of epinephrine and your levels of cortisol.

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So it's really important to understand that the body doesn't distinguish between a troubling text message, ice, tumour breathing, or high-intensity interval training or any other kind of exercise. It's all stress. cognitively reframing that and telling yourself, I like this, I enjoy it, is not going to change the way that that molecule impacts your body and brain.

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I sort of chuckle because people would love to tell you that all you have to do is say, oh, this is good for me. No, what it does to tell yourself that it's good for you or that you enjoy it is that it liberates other molecules like dopamine and serotonin that help buffer the epinephrine response.

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Now, the way that it does that, I've talked about previous episode, but I'll just mention that dopamine is the precursor to epinephrine. Epinephrine is made from dopamine.

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And that's why if you tell yourself you're enjoying something, and because dopamine is so subjective that you can, in some ways, as long as you're not completely lying to yourself, you can get more epinephrine, you get more mileage or more ability to push through something. And you can sort of reframe it, but it's not really cognitive reframing.

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The cognitive part is the trigger, but it's a chemical substance that's actually occurring there. It's dopamine giving you more epinephrine, a bigger amplitude epinephrine release, and it gives you some sense of control. So here's a protocol that anyone can use if you want to increase levels of energy, if you suffer from low energy during the daytime or whenever it is that you'd like to be alert.

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pick a practice that you can do fairly consistently, maybe every day, but maybe every third day or every fourth day. Maybe it's an ice bath or a cold bath. Maybe it's a cold shower. Maybe it's the cyclic inhale, exhale breathing protocol I described.

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If that wasn't clear and people always ask for a demo, I'm not going to do the whole thing right now, but I'm willing to do a few rounds of this or a few cycles, I should say. So it's inhale. I would do that more deeply, more like . You do that 25, 30 times repeatedly, you will start to feel warm. People in the yoga community, they say you're generating heat.

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You're not generating heat, you're releasing adrenaline. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, 25 or 30 times, you will feel agitated and stressed. That's because you're releasing adrenaline in your body, and that's because you're releasing norepinephrine in your brain, and you'll be more alert. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Now, I've discussed on this podcast before that the PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, that means hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them.

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This is why I recently fell in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well for all your cooking needs.

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Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

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Most mornings I cook eggs in it, I cook ground beef in it, ground venison, and the Titanium Pan is also designed in a way that allows eggs and meat to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting on the counter or on the stove.

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For a limited time, Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount on their innovative Titanium Always Pan Pro, designed to last a lifetime and completely toxin-free. Visit fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20 to claim the offer. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can experience this terrific cookware with zero risk.

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Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.

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In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.

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Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

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Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.

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In addition, there are hormones that come both from the mother and from the developing baby, the developing fetus, that impact whether or not the brain will be what they call organized masculine or organized feminine.

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Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.

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Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. So I just want to mention some tools. You might be asking yourself, how could tools possibly come up at this stage of the conversation where we're talking about sexual development and we're talking about the differentiation of tissues in the body? Well, this is true both for children and parents and adults.

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I want to emphasize that there are things that are environmental And there are things that people use that actually can impact hormone levels and can impact sexual development in fairly profound ways. And I want to be very clear. This is not me pulling from some rare journal. I've never heard of it. This is pulling from textbooks in particular.

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Today, I'm guiding a lot of the conversation on work that on behavioral endocrinology. This is a book by Randy Nelson and Lance Crickfield, true experts in the field. I'm going to talk about some of the work from Tyrone Hayes from UC Berkeley about environmental toxins and their impacts on some of these things like testosterone and estrogen. I'm going to touch into them there.

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I'm going to give some anecdotal evidence that's grounded in studies, which we will provide in the caption or that I'll reference here. You know, again, I'm just going to highlight when one starts talking about environmental factors and how they're poisoning us or disrupting growth or

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fertility rates, it can start to sound a little bit crazy, except when you start to actually look at some of the real data, data from quality research labs funded by federal government, funded not from companies or other sources that are really aimed at understanding what the underlying biology is. And for that, I really we we should all be grateful to Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkeley.

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I remember way back when I was a graduate student in the late 90s, goodness, at UC Berkeley. And I remember him, he was studying frogs. He was talking about developmental defects in these frogs that live in different waters around. It was California, but also elsewhere. And he identified a substance which is present in a lot of waterways throughout this country and other countries. So U.S.

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And as I say this, I want you to try and discard with the cultural connotations or your psychological connotations of what masculinization and feminization are, because we're only centering on the biology. So typically people have either two X chromosomes And the traditional language around that is that person is female, right?

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and beyond, certainly not just restricted California. which is atrazine. This is A-T-R-A-Z-I-N-E. Again, this is the stuff of textbooks and it causes severe testicular malformations. So again, atrazine exposure is serious. And what's interesting is if you look at the data,

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what you find is that at sites in Western and Midwestern sections of the United States, 10 to 92% of male frogs, these were frogs, mind you, had testicular abnormalities. And the most severe testicular malformations were in the testes rather than in the sperm. So it's actually the organ itself, the gonad itself. it's very well known now that atrazine is in many herbicides.

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And so, you know, whereas I would say in the 80s and 90s, the discussion around, you know, herbicides and their negative effects was considered kind of like hippy dippy stuff or the stuff you hear about it, you know, your local community markets and these kind of new agey communities, now there's,

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very solid data from federally funded labs at major universities that have been peer reviewed and published in excellent journals showing that indeed many of these herbicides can have negative effects primarily by impacting the ratios of these hormones in either the mother's or in the testes, altering the testes of the fathers or direct effects on developing young animals and potentially humans.

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And so you ask, well, what about humans? Frogs are wonderful, but what about humans? So here are the data on what's happening. And this isn't all going to be scary stuff. We're also going to talk about tools to ameliorate and offset some of these effects.

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depending on your needs but across human populations sperm counts are indeed declining okay so in 1940 the average um the average density of human sperm was 113 million per milliliter of semen that's how it's measured how many sperm per milliliter of semen in 1990 this figure has dropped to 66 it went from 113

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million per milliliter to 66 million per milliliter in the United States and Western Europe. So it's not just a US thing. Researchers also estimated that the volume of semen produced by men has dropped 20% in that time, reduced sperm count per ejaculation even further. So between 1981 and 1991, the ratio of normal spermatogenesis has decreased from 56.4% to 26.9%. So

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there's a lot that's happening primarily because of these herbicides that are in widespread use to reduce sperm counts and these are going to have profound effects not just on sperm counts but on development sexual development at the level of the gonads and the brain because you need testosterone to get uh dihydrotestosterone for primary sexual characteristics you need

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that's come from testosterone to masculinize the brain. And of course, we're not just focusing on sperm and testosterone. You of course also know that many of these herbicides are disrupting estrogens in a similar way, which might explain why puberty is happening so much earlier in young girls these days. So there are a lot of things that are happening.

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Now, does this mean that you have to run around and neurotically avoid anything that includes things like atrazine and should you be avoiding all kinds of herbicides? I don't know, that's up to you, but it does seem that these have pretty marked effects in both the animal studies and in the human studies. So let's talk about female sexual development and

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As always, what we'll do is we'll talk about the normal biology. Then we'll talk a little bit about a kind of extraordinary or unusual set of cases. But we'll talk about them because they illustrate an important principle about how things work under typical circumstances.

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Or an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, and that person will become male. Now, it's not always the case. There are cases where it's XXY, where there are two X chromosomes plus a Y chromosome. There are also cases where it's XYY, where there are two Y chromosomes. And these have important biological and psychological impacts.

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so there is a mutation called androgen insensitivity syndrome and understanding how androgen and sensitivity syndrome works can help you really understand how hormones impact sexual development so here's how it works there are individuals who are xy so they have a y chromosome that are born that make

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testosterone, they have testes, and they don't have Mullerian ducts because on the Y chromosome is this Mullerian inhibiting hormone. However, these individuals look completely female. And in general, they report feeling like girls when they're young, women when they're older. But there's something unusual that's happening in these individuals because they have an XY chromosomal type and not XX.

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So what's happening? Well, what's happening is the testes are making testosterone, but the receptor for testosterone is mutated. And therefore the testes never descend. They don't have ovaries, they have testes, but the testes are internal.

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And so typically these individuals find out that they are actually XY chromosomes so that their chromosomal sex is male, if you will, and their gonadal sex is male, but the gonads, the testes are inside the body. They don't actually develop a scrotum. They don't make ovaries. And when they don't menstruate around the time of puberty, that's a sign that something is different.

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And so they never menstruate around puberty. And if they look into this deeply enough, what you find is that they are actually XY, they make testosterone, but their body can't make use of the testosterone because they don't have the receptors.

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And the receptors are vitally important for most all of the secondary sexual characteristics that we talked about, body hair, penis growth during puberty, et cetera.

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So again, we're talking about this in order to illustrate the principle that in order to have its effects, a hormone doesn't just have to be present, that hormone actually has to be able to bind its receptor and take action on the target cells. Perhaps the simplest way to understand how estrogen and testosterone impact masculinization or feminization of the brain and behavior is from a statement.

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It's actually the closing sentence of an abstract that my colleague Nirao Shah at Stanford School of Medicine published, which is that estrogen, again, it's estrogen that is aromatized from testosterone by aromatase, sets up the masculine repertoire of sexual and in animals and in humans, territorial behaviors. So it sets up the circuitry in the brain. Estrogen does that.

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Estrogen sets up the masculine circuitry in the brain. And testosterone is then what controls the display of those behaviors later in life. And I find that incredibly interesting. You would think it was just testosterone did one thing and estrogen did another, but it turns out that nature is far more interesting than that. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.

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So the first thing we need to establish is that there is something called chromosomal sex. Whether or not there are two X chromosomes or an X and Y chromosome is what we call chromosomal sex. But the next stage of separating out the sexes is what we call gonadal sex. Typically, not always, but typically, if somebody has testes for their gonads, we think of them as male.

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I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.

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Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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Okay, so what are some things that impact sexual development early in life and later in life? Let's talk about cannabis. Let's talk about alcohol. First of all, cannabis, marijuana, THC, there are many studies that point to the fact that THC and other things in cannabis promote significant increases in aromatase activity.

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Pot smokers aren't going to like this, especially male pot smokers aren't going to like this, but it's the reality. Here's the deal, that cannabis, and it's not clear if it's THC itself or other elements in the marijuana plant, promote aromatase activity.

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Now, this has been observed anecdotally where pot smokers have a higher incidence of developing something I mentioned before, gynecomastia, breast bud development, or full-blown breast development in males. Now, earlier I said that estrogen is what masculinizes the male brain.

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In utero, that's true, but the way that cannabis seems to work, at least from the studies I was able to identify, is that it promotes circulating estrogen in the body and therefore can counteract some of the masculinizing effects of things like testosterone and dihydrotestosterone on primary and secondary sexual characteristics so i mentioned this because

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You know, I think nowadays marijuana use is far more widespread and certainly during puberty, it's it can have profound effects on these hormonal systems. And so we'll do another episode that goes really deep into this. But yes, cannabis promotes estrogenic activity by increasing aromatase. Most everyone can appreciate that drinking during pregnancy is not good for the developing fetus.

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Fetal alcohol syndrome is a well-established negative outcome of pregnancy.

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and it's something that there are cognitive effects that are that are really bad there there's actually physical malformation um etc so drinking during pregnancy not good probably drinking during puberty not good either because alcohol in particular certain things like beer but other grain alcohols can increase estrogenic activity now this isn't just about protecting from estrogenic activity.

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It's also protecting girls from excessive or even hypoestrogenic effects of alcohol in puberty. Now, many teenagers drink, college students drink, and it's important to point out that puberty doesn't start on one day and end on another day. Puberty has a beginning, a middle and an end, but development is really our entire lifespan. Okay, so we talked about cannabis. We talked about alcohol.

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Let's talk about cell phones. First of all, I use a cell phone. I use it very often. and I do not think they are evil devices. I think that they require some discipline in order to make sure that it does not become a negative force in one's life. So I personally restrict the number of hours that I'm on the phone and in particular on social media. But what about the cell phone itself?

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When I was a junior professor, I was a pre-tenure early professor, I taught this class on neural circuits and health and disease. And one of the students asked me, are cell phones safe for the brain? And all the data pointed to the fact that

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And if somebody has ovaries, we think of them as female. Although that's not always the case either, but let's just explore the transition from chromosomal sex to gonadal sex, because it's a fascinating one that we all went through in some form or another. So this XY that we typically think of as promoting masculinization of the fetus

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they were or at least there were no data showing that it wasn't i still don't have the answer on that frankly i'm not personally aware of any evidence in quality peer-reviewed studies showing that cell phones are bad for the brain or that holding the phone to the ear is bad or that bluetooth is bad or any of that i'm just not aware of any quality studies however

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I was very interested in a particular study that was published back in 2013 on rats. It was basically took a cell phone and put it under a cage of rats and looked at basically testicular and ovarian development in rats and saw minor, but still statistically significant defects in ovarian and testicular development. Since then, and now returning to the literature,

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i've seen a absolute explosion of studies some of which are in quality journals some of which are in what i would call not blue ribbon journals identifying defects in testicular and or ovarian development by mere exposure to cell phone Oh my god. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Today, we're going to explore hormones, what they are, how they work, what leads to masculinization or feminization of the brain and body. What we're trying to do today is really get to the biology, the physiology, the endocrinology, and the behavior.

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We say that because on the Y chromosome, there are genes and those genes have particular functions that suppress female reproductive organs. So on the Y chromosome, there's a gene which encodes for something called Mullerian inhibiting hormone.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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So there's actually a hormone that's programmed by the Y chromosome that inhibits the formation of Mullerian ducts, which are an important part of the female reproductive apparatus. That's critical because already we're seeing the transition between chromosome Y chromosome and gonad. And other genes on the Y chromosome promote the formation of testes.

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So there are genes like the SRY gene and other genes that promote the formation of testes while they also inhibit the formation of the malaria So the transition from chromosomal sex to gonadal sex is a very important distinction. It's kind of a fork in the road that happens very early in development while fetuses are still in the embryo.

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So we have to distinguish between chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, and then there's what we call hormonal sex, which is the effects of the steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives on what we call morphological sex or the shape of the baby and the human and the genitalia and the jaw and all these other things. And so it actually is quite complicated.

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So, you know, it's a long distance from chromosomes to gender identity and gender identity has a lot of social influences and roles. This is an area that right now is very dynamic and in the discussion out there, as you know, but just getting from chromosomal sex to what we would call gonadal sex and hormonal sex and morphological sex involves a number of steps.

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So today we're going to talk about those steps. And there's some fascinating things that do indeed relate to tools, do indeed relate to some important behavioral choices, important choices about things to avoid while pregnant,

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And for those of you that are not pregnant, things to avoid if you're thinking about eventually having children, and that is not to drive development in one direction or another, but there are examples where there are some deleterious things in our environment that can actually negatively impact what we call sexual development overall, regardless of chromosomal background.

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So let's get started with that. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

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Hormones by definition are a substance, a chemical that's released in one area of the body, typically from something we call a gland, although they can also be released from neurons, but they're released often from glands that travel and have effects both on that gland, but also on other organs and tissues in the body.

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This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.

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that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Let's talk a little bit more about what hormones do. Hormones generally have two categories of effects. They can either be very fast or they can be very slow. There are hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which act very fast.

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And then there are hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which we refer to as the sex steroid hormones. These molecules, for those of you that are interested, are what are called lipophilic, which just means that they like fatty stuff. They can actually pass through fatty membranes.

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And because the outside of cells, as well as what's called the nuclear envelope, where all the DNA contents and stuff are stuffed inside, are made of lipid, of fat, these steroid hormones can actually travel into cells and then interact with the DNA of cells in order to control gene expression.

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So they can change the sorts of things that cells will become, and they can change the way that cells function in a long-term way. And that's actually how the presence of these genes like SRY and mullerian inhibiting hormone lead to

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or elimination, I should say, of things like the Mullerian ducts and promote instead what's called in males the Wolffian ducts or promote the development of testes rather than ovaries. So all you need to know is that hormones have short-term and long-term effects and the long-term effects are actually

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Related to their effects on genes and how those genes are expressed or repressed not in order to prevent them from having particular proteins made so these hormones these steroid hormones are exceedingly powerful and And if we're going to have a discussion about masculinization or feminization, et cetera, you also need to think about the counterpart.

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It's not just about masculinizing the body or feminizing the body and brain. It's also about demasculinizing the brain in many cases as a normal biological function of typically of XX females and defeminization, the suppression of certain pathways that are related to feminization of the body and brain.

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So I've just thrown a lot of biology at you, but this is where it all starts to get incredibly surprising. you would think that it's straightforward, right?

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And that differentiates hormones from things like neurotransmitters, which tend to act more locally. Examples of tissues that produce hormones would be the thyroid, the testes, the ovaries, et cetera.

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Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

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You have a Y chromosome, you suppress the female reproductive pathway like the Mullerian ducks, you promote the development of testes, and then testes make testosterone, and then it organizes the brain male, and it wants to do male-like things, and then in females, you get estrogen, and it wants to do female-like things, and air quotes here for all of this, and it turns out

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

630.865

That isn't how it works at all. Here's where it's interesting. We have to understand that there are effects of these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, on what are called primary sexual characteristics, which are the ones that you're born with, secondary sexual characteristics, which are the ones that show up in puberty, and these are happening in the brain and body and spinal cord.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

654.015

And so I'm going to disentangle all this for you by giving you some examples. First, let's talk about the development of primary sexual characteristics, the ones that show up at birth. And one of the more dramatic examples of this comes from the role of testosterone in creating the external genitalia.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

674.446

It turns out that it's not testosterone that's responsible for the development of the penis in a baby that has an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. It's a different androgen. Androgen is just a category of hormones that includes testosterone, but testosterone is converted in the fetus to something called dihydrotestosterone. And that's accomplished through an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

704.09

Dihydrotestosterone is what we would call the dominant androgen in males. It's responsible for aggression. It's responsible for a lot of Muscular strength, it's involved in beard growth and male pattern baldness. We're going to talk about all of that. But dihydrotestosterone has powerful effects in determining the genitalia while the baby is still in the embryo. So there's testosterone that's made

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

73.669

And then of course there are areas of the brain like the hypothalamus and the pituitary, which are closely related to one another and release hormones that cause the release of yet other hormones out in the body. So let's start with development, sperm meets egg. Everything that happens before that is a topic of the next episode. But sperm meets egg. This is mammalian reproduction.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

731.044

And that testosterone gets converted by this enzyme 5-alpha reductase in a little structure called the tubercle. That tubercle will eventually become the penis. So you say, okay, straightforward. This testosterone is converted to dihydrotestosterone. And then if there's dihydrotestosterone, it controls penis growth. And indeed that's the case. So that's a primary sexual characteristic.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

754.404

That baby will then grow up and later during puberty, There will be the release of a molecule I talked about this last episode called kispeptin, K-I-S-S-P-E-P-T-I-N, kispeptin, which will cause the release of some other hormones, conantropin-releasing hormone, luteinizing hormone, will stimulate the testes to make testosterone.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

773.278

So in puberty, testosterone leads to further growth and development of the penis, as well as the accumulation of, or growth of pubic hair, deepening of the voice, all the secondary sexual characteristics. There's a very interesting phenomenon that was published in the journal Science in the 1970s, for which now there's a wealth of scientific data.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

795.907

And this relates to a genetic mutation where 5-alpha reductase, the enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, doesn't exist. It's mutated. And this actually was first identified in the Dominican Republic. What happens is, baby is born, if you were to look at that baby, it would look female. There would be very little or no external penis.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

822.039

And what was observed is that from time to time, that baby, after being raised as a girl, would, around the age of 11 or 12 or 13,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

834.105

would start to sprout a penis there's actually a name for this it's called huevidosis which the translation is more or less penis at 12. and as strange as this might sound it makes sense if you understand the underlying mutation what happens in these children these huevidosis is that the child is born it has testes which are not descended so up in the body

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

860.784

They weren't able to convert testosterone to dihydrotestosterone because they lack this enzyme 5-alpha reductase. As a consequence, the primary sexual characteristic of external male genitalia, penis, doesn't develop.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

876.153

And then what happens is the baby grows up and then testosterone starts getting secreted from the testes because caspeptin in the brain signals through gonadotropin and luteinizing hormone travels down to the testes. The testes start churning out testosterone and there's a secondary growth of the penis. And all of a sudden there's a penis. And the point here is

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

897.367

that dihydrotestosterone, not testosterone, is responsible for this primary growth of the penis, and that testosterone later is involved in the secondary sexual characteristics, deepening in the voice, et cetera. Now, this is where the information gets even more interesting and applies to essentially everybody.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

918.13

You might think that testosterone, because it masculinizes the body in the secondary sexual characteristic way, and because dihydrotestosterone, another androgen, masculinizes the primary sexual characteristics, the growth of the penis early on, that testosterone must masculinize the brain. But the masculinization of the brain is not accomplished by testosterone. It is accomplished by estrogen.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

950.7

testosterone can be converted into estrogen by an enzyme called aromatase there are neurons in the brain that make aromatase and convert testosterone into estrogen in other words it's estrogen that masculinizes the x y individual that masculinizes the brain and this has profound effects on all sorts of things on behavior on outlook in the world, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

96.291

And that egg starts to duplicate. It starts to make more of itself. It makes more cells. And eventually some of those cells become skin. Some of those cells become brain. Some of those cells become muscle. Some of those cells become fingers. All the stuff that makes up the brain and body plan.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

977.077

But I think most people don't realize that it's estrogen that comes from testosterone that masculinizes the male brain, the XY brain, not testosterone nor dihydrotestosterone. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Hormones Shape Sexual Development

996.072

Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1014.302

Meaning is how we each individually piece together the relevance of one thing to the next, right? So if I suddenly told you that this pen was downloading all the information to my brain that was important to deliver this information, you'd probably think I was a pretty strange character because typically we don't think of pens as downloading information into brains.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1036.673

But if I told you that I was getting information from my computer that was allowing me to say things to you, you'd say, well, that's perfectly reasonable. And that's because we have a clear and agreed upon association with computers and information and memory. And we don't have that same association with pens.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1053.819

you might say, well, duh, but something in our brain needs to solidify those relationships and make sure that the certain relationships don't exist. And it appears that REM sleep is important for that because when you deprive yourself or people of REM, they start seeing odd associations. And we know that if people are deprived of REM sleep for very long periods of time, they start hallucinating.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1077.891

They literally start seeing relationships and movement of objects that isn't happening. And so REM sleep is really where we establish the emotional load, but where we also start discarding of all the meanings that are irrelevant. And if you think about emotionality, a lot of over emotionality or catastrophizing is about seeing problems everywhere.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1100.859

It's very important in order to have healthy emotional and cognitive functioning that we have fairly narrow channels between individual things. If we see something on the news that's very troubling, well, then it makes sense to be very troubled.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1113.248

But if we're troubled by everything and we start just saying, you know, everything is bothering me and I'm feeling highly irritable and everything is just distorting and troubling me, chances are we are not actively removing the meaning, the connectivity between life experiences as well as we could. And that almost always maps back to a deficit in REM sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1134.681

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, It's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1147.915

Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1167.551

What sets Chuve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1180.703

Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

120.452

Now this is true regardless of whether or not you wake up at the middle of the night to use the restroom or your sleep is broken. The more sleep you're getting across the night, the more REM sleep you're going to have.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1202.297

Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. So REM sleep seems to be where we uncouple the potential for emotionality between various experiences.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1217.461

And that brings us to the absolutely fundamental relationship and similarity of REM sleep to some of the clinical practices that have been designed to eliminate emotionality and help people move through trauma and other troubling experiences. Many of you perhaps have heard of trauma treatments such as EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1243.023

or ketamine treatment for trauma, something that recently became legal and is in fairly widespread clinical use. Interestingly enough, EMDR and ketamine, at kind of a core level, bear very similar features to REM sleep. So let's talk about EMDR first. EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing, is something that was developed by a psychologist, Francine Shapiro.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1273.373

She actually was in Palo Alto. And the story goes that she was walking, not so instantly, in the trees and forest behind Stanford. And she was recalling a troubling event in her own mind. So this would be from her own life. And she realized that as she was walking, the emotional load of that experience was not as intense or severe.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1299.631

she extrapolated from that experience of walking and not feeling as stressed about the stressful event to a practice that she put into work with her clients, with her patients, and that now has become fairly widespread. It's actually one of the few behavior treatments that are approved by the American Psychological Association for the treatment of trauma.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

131.903

And REM sleep and non-REM, as I'll refer to it, have distinctly different roles in learning and unlearning, and they are responsible for learning and unlearning of distinctly different types of information. And this has enormous implications for learning of motor skills, for unlearning of traumatic events, or for processing emotionally challenging, as well as emotionally pleasing events.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1324.452

What she had her clients and patients do was move their eyes from side to side while recounting some traumatic or troubling event. Why eye movements? Well, she never really said why eye movements, but soon I'll tell you why the decision to select these lateralized eye movements for the work in the clinic was the right one.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1346.346

So these eye movements, they look silly, but they basically involve sitting in a chair and moving one's eyes from side to side for 30, 60 seconds, then describing this challenging procedure. Now as a vision scientist who also works on stress, When I first heard this, I thought it was crazy, frankly. People would ask me about EMDR, and I just thought, that's crazy.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1371.903

I went and looked up some of the theories about why EMDR might work, and there were a bunch of theories. Oh, it mimics the eye movements during REM sleep. That was one. Turns out that's not true, and I'll explain why. The other one was, oh, it synchronizes the activity on the two sides of the brain.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1389.238

Well, sort of, I mean, when you look into both sides of the binocular visual field, you activate the visual cortex, but this whole idea of synchrony between the two sides of the brain is something that I think modern neuroscience is starting to, let's just say gently or not so gently move away from this whole right brain, left brain business.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1410.635

It turns out, however, that I move into the sort that I just did and that Francine Shapiro took from this walk experience and brought to her clients in the clinic. are the sorts of eye movements that you generate whenever you're moving through space, when you are self-generating that movement.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1427.417

So not so much when you're driving a car, but certainly if you were riding a bicycle or you were walking or you were running, you don't realize it, but you have these reflexive subconscious eye movements that go from side to side, and they are associated with the motor system. So when you move forward, your eyes go like this.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1443.848

There've been a number of studies showing that these lateralized eye movements helped people move through or dissociate the emotional experience of particular traumas with those experiences such that they could recall those experiences after the treatment and not feel stressed about them or they didn't report them as traumatic any longer.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1462.865

Now, the success rate wasn't 100%, but they were statistically significant in a number of studies. In the last five years, there have been no fewer than five journals and papers showing that lateralized eye movements of the sort that I just did, and if you're just listening to this, it's just moving the eyes from side to side with eyes open,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1481.789

that those eye movements, but not vertical eye movements suppress the activity of the amygdala, which is this brain region that is involved in threat detection, stress, anxiety, and fear. There are some forms of fear that are not amygdala dependent, but the amygdala, it's not a fear center, but it is critical for the fear response and for the experience of anxiety. So that's interesting.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1508.569

We've got a clinical tool now that indeed shows a lot of success in a good number of people.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1516.053

where eye movements from side to side are suppressing the amygdala and the general theme is to use those eye movements to suppress the fear response and then to recount or repeat the experience and over time uncouple the heavy emotional load, the sadness, the depression, the anxiety, the fear from whatever it was that happened that was traumatic. This is important to understand because

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1542.019

I'd love to be able to tell somebody who had a traumatic experience that they would forget that experience. But the truth is you never forget the traumatic experience. What you do is you remove the emotional load. Eventually it really does lose its potency. The emotional potency is alleviated.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1558.806

Now EMDR, I should just mention, tends to be most successful for single event or very specific kinds of trauma that happened over and over, as opposed to say an entire childhood. or an entire divorce. It tends to be most effective for single event kinds of things, car crashes, et cetera, where people can really recall the events in quite a lot of detail.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

156.477

And as we'll see, one can actually leverage their daytime activities in order to access more slow wave sleep or non-REM sleep, as we'll call it, or more REM sleep, depending on your particular emotional and physical needs. So it's really a remarkable stage of life that we have a lot more control and power over than you might believe.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1581.84

It's not for everybody and it should be done, if it's going to be done for trauma, it should be done in a clinical setting with somebody certified to do this, but that bears a lot of resemblance to REM sleep, right? This experience in our sleep where our eyes are moving, excuse me, although in a different way, but we don't have the chemical epinephrine in order to generate the fear response.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1604.102

And yet we're remembering the event from the previous day or days. And then now there's this chemical treatment with the drug ketamine, which also bears a lot of resemblance to the sorts of things that happen in REM sleep. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It is remarkably similar to the drug called PCP, which is certainly a hazardous drug for people to use.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1632.017

Ketamine and PCP both function to disrupt the activity of a particular receptor in the brain called the NMDA receptor, N-methyldeaspartate receptor. This is a receptor that's in the surface of neurons or on the surface of neurons for which most of the time it's not active. But when something very extreme happens,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1657.299

and there's a lot of activity in the neural pathway that impinges on that receptor, it opens and it allows the entry of molecules, ions, that trigger a cellular process that we call long-term potentiation. And long-term potentiation translates to a change in connectivity so that later you don't need that intense event for the neuron to become active again. Ketamine blocks this NMDA receptor.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1686.018

So how is ketamine being used? Ketamine is being used to prevent learning of emotions very soon after trauma. Ketamine is being stocked in a number of different emergency rooms where if people are brought in quickly, and these are hard to describe even, a horrible experience of somebody seeing a loved one next to them killed in a car accident and they were driving that car.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

17.598

Today, we're going to talk about dreaming, learning during dreaming, as well as unlearning during dreaming, in particular, unlearning of challenging emotional events. Now, numerous people throughout history have tried to make sense of dreams in some sort of organized way, the most famous of which, of course, is Sigmund Freud, who talked about symbolic representations in dreams.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1708.612

This isn't for everybody, certainly, and you need to talk to your physician, but ketamine is being used so they might infuse somebody with ketamine so that their emotion is, it can still occur, but that the plasticity, the change in the wiring of their brain won't allow that intense emotion to be attached to the experience.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1728.758

Now, immediately you can imagine the sort of ethical implications of this, right? Because certain emotions need to be coupled to experiences. But in the clinical setting, the basis of ketamine-assisted therapies is really to remove emotion. Ketamine is about becoming dissociative or removed from the emotional component of the experience.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1748.823

So now we have ketamine, which chemically blocks plasticity and prevents the connection between an emotion and an experience. That's a pharmacologic intervention. We have EMDR, which is this eye movement thing that is designed to suppress the amygdala and is designed to remove emotionality while somebody recounts an experience. And we have REM sleep where the chemical epinephrine that

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

177.186

So let's start by talking about slow wave sleep or non-REM sleep. So slow wave sleep is characterized by a particular pattern of brain activity in which the brain is metabolically active, but that there's these big sweeping waves of activity that include a lot of the brain. Now, the interesting thing about slow wave sleep are the neuromodulators

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1773.57

and the experience of intense emotion in the brain and body is not allowed. And so we're starting to see a organizational logic, which is that a certain component of our sleeping life is acting like therapy. And that's really what REM sleep is about. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1795.907

Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1811.775

And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1824.563

Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1840.632

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1860.482

It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1883.539

we should really think about REM sleep and slow-wave sleep as both critical. Slow-wave sleep for motor learning and detailed learning, REM sleep for attaching of emotions to particular experiences, and then for making sure that the emotions are not attached to the wrong experiences, and for unlearning emotional responses if they're too intense or severe.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1905.097

And this all speaks to the great importance of mastering one's sleep, something that we talked about in episode and making sure that if life has disruptive events, either due to travel or stress or changes in school or food schedule, something that we talked about in episodes three and four, that one can still grab a hold and manage one's sleep life.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1930.976

because fundamentally the unlearning of emotions that are troubling to us is what allows us to move forward in life. And indeed the REM deprivation studies show that people become hyper-emotional. They start to catastrophize and it's no surprise therefore that sleep disturbances correlate with so many emotional and psychological disturbances.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1954.555

By now it should just be obvious why that will be the case. I was in a discussion with a colleague of mine who's down in Australia, Dr. Sarah McKay. I've known her for two decades now from the time she was at Oxford. And Sarah studies, among other things, menopause in the brain. And she was saying that a lot of the emotional effects of menopause actually are not directly related to the hormones.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

1979.974

There've been some really nice studies showing that the disruptions in temperature regulation in menopause map to changes in sleep regulation, that then impact emotionality and an inability to correctly adjust the circuits related to emotionality. So sleep deprivation isn't just deprivation of energy. It's not just deprivation of immune function.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

199.859

that tend to be associated with it that are most active and least active during slow-wave sleep. And here's why. To remind you, neuromodulators are these chemicals that act rather slowly, but their main role is to bias particular brain circuits to be active and other brain circuits to not be active. and they are associated as a consequence with certain brain functions.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2004.469

It is deprivation of self-induced therapy every time we go to sleep. So these things like EMDR and ketamine therapies are in-clinic therapies, but REM sleep is the one that you're giving yourself every night when you go to sleep, which raises, I think, the other important question, which is how to get and how to know if you're getting the appropriate amount of REM sleep and slow wave sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2028.085

Turns out that for sake of learning new information, limiting the variation in the amount of your sleep, is at least as important and perhaps more important than just getting more sleep overall.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2041.712

I find great relief personally in the fact that consistently getting for me about six hours or six and a half hours is going to be more beneficial than constantly striving for eight or nine and finding that some nights I'm getting five and sometimes I'm getting nine and varying around the mean.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2057.519

Now, ideally you're getting the full compliment of slow wave sleep early in night and sleep toward morning, which is REM sleep, which brings us to how to get more REM sleep. Well, there are a couple of different ways, but here's how to not get more REM sleep, all right? First of all, drink a lot of fluid right before going to sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2078.748

One of the reasons why we wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom is because when our bladder is full, There is a neural connection, literally a set of neurons and a nerve circuit that goes to the brainstem that wakes us up. So having a full bladder is one way to disrupt your sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2094.734

The other one is tryptophan or anything that contains 5-HTP, which is serotonin or a precursor to serotonin. Serotonin is made from tryptophan. For some people, those supplements might work, but beware serotonin supplements could disrupt the timing of REM sleep and slow wave sleep. Now, if you want to increase your slow wave sleep, that's interesting. There are ways to do that.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2119.254

One of the most powerful ways to increase slow wave sleep, the percentage of slow wave sleep, apparently without any disruption to the other components of sleep and learning, is to engage in resistance exercise. It's pretty clear that resistance exercise triggers a number of metabolic and endocrine pathways that lend themselves to release of growth hormone, which happens early in the night.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2143.158

And resistance exercise therefore can induce a greater percentage of slow wave sleep. It doesn't have to be done very close to going to bedtime.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2151.705

In fact, for some people that the exercise could be disruptive for reasons I've talked about in previous episodes, but resistance exercise, unlike aerobic exercise does seem to increase the amount of slow wave sleep, which as we know is involved in motor learning and the acquisition of fine detailed information, not general rules or the emotional components of experiences.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2173.32

Alcohol and marijuana are well known to induce states that are pseudo sleep-like, especially when people fall asleep after having consumed alcohol or THC, the active component, one of the active components in marijuana. alcohol, THC, and most things like them, meaning things that increase serotonin or GABA, are going to disrupt the pattern of sleep. They're going to disrupt the depth.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2202.529

They're going to disrupt the overall sequencing of more slow-wave sleep early in the night and more REM sleep later in the night. That's just the reality. Now, of course, if... That's what you need in order to sleep. And that's within your protocol. As I've said here before, I'm not suggesting people take anything. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not a cop.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2218.806

So I'm not trying to regulate anyone's behavior. I'm just telling you what the literature says. Today, we've been in a deep dive of sleep and dreaming, learning and unlearning. And I just want to recap a few of the highlights and important points. A lot more slow-wave sleep and less REM early in the night. More REM and less slow-wave sleep later in the night.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

222.046

So we know for instance, and just to review, acetylcholine in waking states is a neuromodulator that tends to amplify the activity of brain circuits associated with focus and attention. Norepinephrine is a neuromodulator that tends to amplify the brain circuits associated with alertness and the desire to move.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2243.208

REM sleep is associated with intense experiences without this chemical epinephrine that allows us the anxiety or fear and almost certainly has an important role in uncoupling of emotion from experiences, kind of self-induced therapy that we go into each night. That bears striking resemblance to things like EMDR and ketamine therapies and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2266.924

Slow-wave sleep is critical, however, it's critical mostly for motor learning and the learning of specific details. So REM is kind of emotions and general themes and meaning and slow-wave sleep, motor learning and details.

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Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

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I personally find it fascinating that consistency of sleep, meaning getting six hours every night is better than getting 10 one night, eight the next, five the next, four the next. I find that fascinating and I think I also like it because it's something I can control better than just trying to sleep more, which I think I'm not alone in agreeing that that's just hard for a lot of people to do.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

2304.921

Thank you for joining me in this journey of the nervous system and biology and trying to understand the mechanisms that make us who we are and how we function in sleep and in wakefulness. It's really an incredible landscape to consider. And I hope that you're getting a lot out of the information. As always, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

240.194

Serotonin is the neuromodulator that's released and tends to amplify the circuits in the brain and body that are associated with bliss and the desire to remain still. And dopamine is the neuromodulator that's released and is associated with amplification of the neural circuits in the brain and body associated with pursuing goals and pleasure and reward.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

262.125

So in slow wave sleep, something really interesting happens. There's essentially no acetylcholine. And acetylcholine, as I just mentioned, is associated with focus. So you can think of slow wave sleep as these big sweeping waves of activity through the brain and a kind of distortion of space and time so that we're not really focusing on any one thing.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

283.283

Now, the other molecules that are very active at that time are norepinephrine, which is a little bit surprising because normally in waking states, norepinephrine is going to be associated with a lot of alertness and the desire to move. But there's not a ton of norepinephrine around in slow-wave sleep, but it is around.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

301.934

So there's something associated with the movement circuitry going on in slow-wave sleep. And remember, this is happening mostly at the beginning of the night. Your sleep is dominated by slow wave sleep. So no acetylcholine, very little norepinephrine, although there is some, and a lot of serotonin.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

318.34

And serotonin, again, is associated with this desire, this sensation of kind of bliss or wellbeing, but not a lot of movement. And during sleep, you tend not to move. Now in slow wave sleep, you can move. You're not paralyzed. So you can roll over. If people are going to sleepwalk, typically it's going to be during slow wave sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

336.925

And what studies have shown through some kind of sadistic experiments where people are deprived specifically of slow wave sleep, and that can be done by waking them up as soon as the electrode recordings show that they're in slow wave sleep, or by chemically altering their sleep so that it biases them away from slow wave sleep. What studies have shown is that motor learning

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

361.153

is generally occurring in slow wave sleep. So let's say the day before you go to sleep, you were learning some new dance move, or you were learning some specific motor skill, either a fine motor skill or a course motor skill. Learning of those skills is happening primarily during slow wave sleep in the early part of the night. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

38.609

A lot of that has been kind of debunked, although I think that there's some interest in what the symbols of dreaming are. And this is something that we'll talk about in more depth today, although not Freudian theory in particular.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

387.137

By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

398.755

What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

409.665

For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

429.959

These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

451.067

In addition, slow wave sleep has been shown to be important for the learning of detailed information. So we can think of slow wave sleep as important for motor learning, motor skill learning, and for the learning of specific details about specific events.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

467.273

And this turns out to be fundamentally important because now we know that slow wave sleep is primarily in the early part of the night and motor learning is occurring primarily early in the night and detail learning is occurring early in the night. I want to talk about REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

486.072

REM sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, as I mentioned before, occurs throughout the night, but you're going to have more of it. A larger percentage of these 90 minute sleep cycles is going to be comprised of REM sleep as you get toward morning. REM sleep is fascinating.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

501.419

It was discovered in the 50s when a sleep laboratory in Chicago, the researchers observed that people's eyes were moving under their eyelids. Something very important that we're going to address when we talk about trauma later is that the eye movements are not just side to side, they're very erratic in all different directions.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

521.332

One thing that I don't think anyone, I've never heard anyone really talk about publicly is why eye movements during sleep. Eyes are closed and sometimes people's eyelids will be a little bit open and their eyes are darting around, especially in little kids. I don't suggest you do this.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

53.337

So I think in order to really think about dreams and what to do with them and how to maximize the dream experience for sake of learning and unlearning, the best way to address this is to look at the physiology of sleep, to really address what do we know concretely about sleep? So first of all, as we get sleepy,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

534.741

I'm not even sure it's ethical, but it has been done where you pull back the eyelids of a kid while they're sleeping and their eyes are kind of darting all over the place. Rapid eye movement sleep is fascinating and occurs because there are connections between the brainstem, an area called the pons,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

550.747

and areas of the thalamus and the top of the brainstem that are involved in generating movements in different directions, sometimes called saccades. Although sometimes during rapid eye movement sleep, it's not just rapid, it's kind of a jittery side to side thing. And then the eyeballs kind of roll. It's really pretty creepy to look at if you see.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

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So what's happening there is the circuitry that is involved in conscious eye movements is kind of going haywire, but it's not haywire. It's these waves of activity from the brainstem up to the so-called thalamus, which is an area that filters sensory information and then up to the cortex. And the cortex of course is involved in conscious perceptions.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

589.799

In REM sleep, serotonin is essentially absent, okay? So this molecule, this neuromodulator that tends to create the feeling of bliss and wellbeing and just calm, placidity is absent. In addition to that, norepinephrine, this molecule that's involved in movement and alertness is absolutely absent.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

613.09

It's probably one of the few times in our life that epinephrine is essentially at zero activity within our system. And that has a number of very important implications for the sorts of dreaming that occur during REM sleep and the sorts of that can occur in REM sleep and unlearning. First of all, in REM sleep, we are paralyzed. We are experiencing what's called atonia, which just means

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

639.292

completely laid out and paralyzed. We also tend to experience whatever it is that we're dreaming about as a kind of hallucination or a hallucinatory activity. So in REM, our eyes are moving, but the rest of our body is paralyzed and we are hallucinating. There's no epinephrine around.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

659.323

Epinephrine doesn't just create a desire to move and alertness, it is also the chemical signature of fear and anxiety. It's what's released from our adrenal glands when we experience something that's fearful or alerting. So if a car suddenly screeches in front of us or we get a troubling text message, adrenaline is deployed into our system. Adrenaline is epinephrine.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

684.393

Those are equivalent molecules. And epinephrine isn't just released from our adrenals, it's also released within our brain. So there's this weird stage of our life that happens more toward morning that we call REM sleep, where we're hallucinating and having these outrageous experiences in our mind, but the chemical that's associated with fear and panic and anxiety is not available to us.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

711.897

And that turns out to be very important. And you can imagine why that's important. It's important because it allows us to experience things, both replay of things that did occur, as well as elaborate contortions of things that didn't occur. And it allows us to experience those in the absence of fear and anxiety.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

734.409

So we have this incredible period of sleep in which our experience of emotionally-laden events is dissociated. It's chemically blocked from us having the actual emotion. So To just recap where we've gone so far, slow-wave sleep early in the night, it's been shown to be important for motor learning and for detail learning.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

75.025

we tend to shut our eyes, and that's because there are some autonomic centers in the brain, some neurons that control closing of the eyelids when we get sleepy. And then we transition into sleep. And sleep, regardless of how long we sleep, is generally broken up into a series of 90-minute cycles, these ultradian cycles. So early in the night,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

759.366

REM sleep has a certain dream component in which there's no epinephrine, therefore we can't experience anxiety, we are paralyzed. Those dreams tend to be really vivid and have a lot of detail to them. And yet in REM sleep, what's very clear is that the sorts of learning that happened in REM sleep are not motor events. It's more about unlearning of emotional events.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

782.761

And now we know why, because the chemicals available for really feeling those emotions are not present. Now that has very important implications. So let's address those implications from two sides. First of all, we should ask what happens if we don't get enough REM sleep? And a scenario that happens a lot where people don't get enough REM sleep is the following.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

806.333

I'll just explain the one that I'm familiar with because it happens to me a lot, although I figured out ways to adjust. I go to sleep around 10, 30, 11 o'clock. I fall asleep very easily. And then I wake up around three or 4 a.m. I now know to use a NSDR, a non-sleep deep rest protocol. And that allows me to fall back asleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

828.668

Even though it's called non-sleep deep rest, it's really allows me to relax my body and brain. And I tend to fall back asleep and sleep till about 7 a.m. During which time I get a lot of REM sleep. And I know this because I've measured it. And I know this because my dreams tend to be very intense of the sort that we know is typical of REM sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

850.001

In this scenario, I've gotten my slow wave sleep early in the night and I've got my REM sleep toward morning. However, there are times when I don't go back to sleep. Maybe I have a flight to catch, that's happened. Sometimes I've got a lot on my mind and I don't go back to sleep. I can tell you and you've probably experienced that the lack of REM sleep tends to make people emotionally irritable.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

872.163

It tends to make us feel as if the little things are the big things. So it's very clear from laboratory studies where people have been deprived selectively of REM sleep that our emotionality tends to get a little bit unhinged and we tend to catastrophize small things. We tend to feel like the world is really daunting. We're never going to move forward in the ways that we want.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

895.904

We can't unlearn the emotional components of whatever it is that's been happening, even if it's not traumatic. The other thing that happens in REM sleep is a replay of certain types of spatial information about where we were and why we were in those places.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

911.015

And this maps to some beautiful data and studies that were initiated by a guy named Matt Wilson at MIT years ago, showing that in rodents, and it turns out in non-human primates and in humans, there's a replay of spatial information during REM sleep. that almost precisely maps to the activity that we experienced during the day as we move from one place to another.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

932.887

So here's a common world scenario. You go to a new place, you navigate through that city or that environment. This place doesn't have to be at the scale of a city. It can be a new building. It could be finding particular rooms, new social interaction. You experience that, and if it's important enough, that becomes solidified a few days later and you won't forget it.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

95.479

These 90 minute cycles tend to be comprised more of shallow sleep and slow wave sleep. And we tend to have less so-called REM sleep, R-E-M sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep. For every 90 minute cycle that we have during a night of sleep, we tend to start having more and more REM sleep. So more of that 90 minute cycle is comprised of REM sleep and less of slow wave sleep.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

953.954

If it's unimportant, you'll probably forget it. during REM sleep, there's a literal replay of the exact firing of the neurons that occurred while you were navigating that same city you're building earlier. So REM sleep seems to be involved in the generation of this detailed spatial information. But what is it that's actually happening in REM sleep?

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

976.636

So there's this uncoupling of emotion, but most of all what's happening in REM sleep is that we're forming a relationship with particular rules or algorithms. We're starting to figure out based on all the experience that we had during the day, whether or not, it's important that we avoid certain people or that we approach certain people.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

995.564

Whether or not it's important that when we enter a building that we go into the elevator and turn left where the bathroom is, for instance, these general themes of things and locations and how they fit together. And that has a word, it's called meaning. During our day, we're experiencing all sorts of things.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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For those of you that are interested in meditation and perhaps those of you who are not, but are considering it, what they talk about in this book is the fact that meditation has two separate lines of effects. One of those lines of effects are things that change your state. So you're stressed, you sit down, you meditate and you relax and you go into a particular state.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1036.369

The other are the changes that occur over time and those are changes in trait. So personality can actually change with long bouts of TM meditation or repeated meditation. In any case, the reason we're talking about altered traits today is because certain types of meditation can get people's brains into states that very closely mimic slow wave sleep.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

105.043

which just means it's below the thalamus, hypo. It sits at the base of your brain in the front. It's part of the forebrain. So it's more or less above the roof of your mouth, maybe about a centimeter or so, and then about a centimeter forward in most people. And neurons in the hypothalamus release hormones that are called releasing hormones.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1063.427

So what this means is for people that are interested in increasing growth hormone, a meditation practice that allows you to get into these slow wave states delta-type frequency activity in the brain may be very beneficial because, as I mentioned before, that's what's gating growth hormone release. It's not just a circadian phenomenon. It's actually controlled by these brain waves.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1088.328

Now let's move to the things that one can do that have been shown to have let's just be honest, pretty enormous effects on growth hormone release in waking. And these are things that are very actionable. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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One of the things that can have a dramatic effect on levels of growth hormone release in waking, as well as in sleep the following night, is exercise. There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies measuring growth hormone, both during... or sometimes after exercise or the following night.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1185.218

And the conclusion that one takes away from all of these is that exercise has to be of particular duration and intensity in order to get growth hormone release. So first, I'm just going to tell you what I found to be the maximum amount of growth hormone release as it relates to a particular form of exercise.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1204.244

The particular form of exercise is either weight training or it can be endurance training, but the endurance training and the weight training actually have to be limited to about 60 minutes, not much longer. A proper warmup seems to accelerate the release of growth hormone once the hard work phase starts. So 10 minutes of warmup or so was the number that I extracted from all these studies.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1230.244

And when you say warmup, it doesn't mean just warm up the limbs and tissues that you're going to use so you don't get injured, actually warm the body. Getting the body warm as a warmup seems to be important because temperature of the body seems to be an important condition. or prerequisite for certain patterns of exercise to maximize growth hormone release.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1249.278

So if it's weight bearing exercise, it would be getting close to that final repetitions where you can't complete them, but not pushing through those or even going to failure, but getting close leads to anywhere from 300 to 500% increases in resting growth hormone levels and 300 to 500% increases in growth hormone the following night when you go to sleep, which is incredible.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

125.235

So anytime you hear releasing, chances are those are neurons that are in your brain and they extend little wires we call axons into your pituitary and the pituitary releases a bunch of hormones into the bloodstream and the pituitary releases things that most often have the name of stimulating hormone because they stimulate organs. So

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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One of the other conditions that seemed to be important, again, was to have relatively low blood glucose. So probably not eating too close to exercise or not ingesting a lot of sugars during the exercise. That was supported by the fact that ingestion of a sports drink that contains caloric sugar immediately flatlined the growth hormone levels.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1293.866

So really interesting relationship between insulin, glucose, and growth hormone. And then... The other interesting thing was that even after the exercise, taking body temperature back down to normal levels relatively quickly seemed to be associated with these big spikes in growth hormone.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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Otherwise what would happen is you get these big spikes in growth hormone, but if the exercise went too long or if body temperature remained too high for too long, then you didn't get the second increase in growth hormone the following night. Let's talk about supplements. So this has been known about for some time,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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But arginine, the amino acid arginine can increase growth hormone levels substantially. The levels and the amounts of arginine required to get big growth hormone release increases is pretty substantial. So some people will take arginine before bedtime. Some people will take it before exercise. The prerequisite again is low blood glucose. Blood glucose is high, it's going to quash the effect.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1356.109

the amounts of arginine that people take are anywhere from three grams to 10 grams or sometimes even more. Although this is definitely a case of more is not better. There is a threshold at which is actually blunted by taking more than nine grams of arginine. Now, nine grams of arginine orally is a lot of pills. It's at minimum nine pills, and it can cause some GI disturbance, right?

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1385.906

People can feel nauseous. Some people will throw it up. What's interesting, however, is that whether or not it's by mouth or by vein,

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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taking arginine can dramatically increase growth hormone release 400 to 600 above baselines these are huge increases in growth hormone now here is something really important and interesting to note which is that increasing arginine levels with the specific goal of increasing growth hormone release can actually short circuit the effects of exercise on growth hormone.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1421.551

Several studies I looked at, looked at the interaction of taking arginine and the exercise or just the arginine or just the exercise alone. And so you don't, unfortunately, if growth hormone increases your goal, you don't unfortunately get to increase growth hormone 800% by taking arginine and exercising. It always seems to be clamped at about 300 to 500% increases. So hopefully that's clear.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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One thing that's particularly interesting to me as somebody who's in his 40s is that it's actually between ages 30 and 40 that the amount of growth hormone that you release each night is reduced by two to threefold.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

146.169

In keeping with the theme of thyroid hormone, you have thyroid-releasing hormone in the brain, tells the pituitary to release thyroid-stimulating hormone, and then the thyroid, which we'll talk about in a moment, releases thyroid hormones.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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And since everybody goes through this age-related decline very dramatically, it seems to me that the things that we're supposed to be doing anyway, like exercising, like trying not to eat too close to bedtime, trying to optimize sleep, all of these are wonderful tools that we should be pursuing and perhaps using, and they can actually offset the two to three fold decrease, right?

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1482.713

If we're talking about a two to three fold decrease for people there in their thirties and forties, and then we're talking about increases from exercise or from maybe from supplementation, but certainly from exercise of 300 to 500%, well, then all of a sudden we're in a position to actually offset the age related decline in growth hormone completely just through behaviors.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1502.168

And I think that's quite interesting and quite powerful. Now, I'd like to discuss a way that anyone can increase their levels of growth hormone dramatically. And when I say dramatically, I mean dramatically. I'll get to the numbers in a couple minutes, but we have to remember how growth hormone is released in the first place. Remember, it all starts in the brain, in the hypothalamus.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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The hypothalamus is a brain area that controls things like sexual behavior, temperature regulation, meaning when you want to be awake and when you want to be asleep, aggression, all of that. There are other brain areas involved too, but it has a rich collection of different neurons involved in all these very basic functions.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1545.103

Now, as we talked about the releasing hormones, the growth hormone releasing hormone comes from neurons in the hypothalamus. Those then communicate with the pituitary and the pituitary releases growth hormone. And then the growth hormone acts on all these different tissues, muscle, liver, cartilage, et cetera. Body fat makes them use energy.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1567.091

That's why you lose body fat when growth hormone levels are high. It makes you grow muscle, strengthens bones, et cetera. Now, one of the things that has a profound effect on growth hormone levels, growth hormone release is temperature. Now the data on this are very strong and the data come from both animal studies and human studies. And if you're guessing which direction this is going to go,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

159.719

The thyroid is a little butterfly-shaped gland that's right around the Adam's apple, and it's got four little bumps behind it called the parathyroid gland, and it releases thyroid. two hormones into the blood to stimulate different tissues and their metabolism. And those hormones are called T4 and T3. So if this is already sounding like a lot of information, it's really easy, I promise.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1594.622

you can probably imagine that making animals or people warmer is the way to go if you want to increase growth hormone. Now, anytime you're going to increase temperature of yourself or anyone else or an animal, it is risky. I want to be really clear about this. Not everyone should engage in the behaviors I'm about to describe, but

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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and i should just say the reason it's risky is it doesn't take much of a temperature increase in the brain to cook the brain to cook neurons and after that point neurons can't come back and people can die from hyperthermia however

Huberman Lab

Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

1630.387

There are really strong data pointing to the fact that sauna, AKA deliberate hyperthermia, not too high, however, that sauna can increase the release of growth hormone and other hormones. And what's so dramatic about this literature is the size of the effects that are reported. Entering environments where it's very hot for short periods of time, anywhere from 20 minutes to 30 minutes,

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where the temperature is 80 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius has been shown to increase growth hormone release 16-fold. That's right, 16-fold, that's 1,600%. Now, there are also effects on other hormones, prolactin, cortisol, et cetera. So the pattern that was described in this study and there've been many studies now, endocrine effects of repeated sauna were done in 17 humans.

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They actually had to do this three days in a row. And the pattern was to get into the sauna for 20 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of cooling, followed by 20 minutes sauna again, led to a five-fold increase in growth hormone. And then by doing that, day after day after day, on the third day, you would see these huge increases of like 16 fold, up to 16 fold.

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But these increases in growth hormone are tremendous. And what they probably stem from are increased activity of neurons within the hypothalamus that stimulate growth hormone release from the pituitary. And that's probably because the growth hormone releasing hormone neurons in the hypothalamus

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sit very closely and may even be intermixed with some of the neurons in the hypothalamus that regulate heat and body temperature. Remember metabolism is in part a heat. It's like a furnace of how much energy you're consuming and using for building or for energy usage purposes. So sauna can be very, very interesting.

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And again, it's 20 minutes, 30 minute cooling, 20 minutes again, proceed with extreme caution, but nonetheless, these are pretty extreme effects in terms of their abilities to increase growth hormone levels. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.

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That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot.

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They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.

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With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.

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Releasing hormone comes from the brain, stimulating hormone comes from the pituitary. And in this case, we're talking about the thyroid binding up that stimulating hormone and saying, oh, I need to release something that releases T4 and T3. And guess what? You can basically forget about T4. T4, it's not completely inactive. It has some roles, but T3 is the one that's more or less active.

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They're incredibly delicious, and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman.

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there's a kind of new area that's developing now that I think deserves our attention, not because I'm encouraging it, but because it is happening and those are peptides. So these days you hear a lot about peptides. I'd like to clarify a little bit about what peptides are. Peptides is a really, huge category of biological compounds. Peptides are just strings of amino acids, right?

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So we've talked about L-tyrosine, arginine, ornithine. Those are amino acids. Those are individual amino acids. And those are put together into little small peptides or they're what are called polypeptides, which are just longer peptides.

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It turns out that for any substance like growth hormone or growth hormone releasing hormone, it's made up of different amino acids in different sequences, just like your genes are made up of A's and G's and C's and T's, nucleotides in different sequences. It's like a recipe.

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Peptides tend to be short sequences of amino acids that resemble a hormone enough or resemble some other peptide enough that it can lead to the similar or same effects when you inject them. So for example, we make growth hormone releasing hormone from our brain, which stimulates growth hormone from the pituitary, but

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People now will take things like sermoralin, S-E-R-M-O-R-E-L-I-N, sermoralin, which is not the entire peptide sequence of growth hormone releasing hormone, but it's a subset of those. Then that stimulates the release of growth hormone from the pituitary. So this is not taking growth hormone, this is taking the stimulating hormone or what's often called a secretagogue or a mimic.

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It causes a secretion of the hormone that one wants. Sermorlin is prescription. Do they work? Yes. Do they shut down your natural production of, growth hormone-releasing hormone?

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Well, the answer is yes, but some of these peptides actually have the effect of changing gene expression, because as you recall, growth hormone, big increases in growth hormone that are short-lived, like sauna, or I should say exercise, or arginine, or sauna, it seems like has these huge effects. Those are transient.

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But when one is injecting over and over a constant level, you can put into action gene expression programs that can be long lived. And let's say you have a particular tumor in the body. Tumors will grow when they see growth hormone, even if that tumor is unhealthy for you, right? You've got growth of tissues all over the body. So again, not promoting their use, but they're definitely out there.

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And so now if you hear about them or if someone's talking to you about them, now hopefully you have a better understanding about their underlying biology. And you can think rationally about whether or not they are the right decision for you. Okay, once again, covered an enormous amount of material.

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Hopefully now you understand thyroid hormone and what it does and a little bit about its mechanism or maybe a lot and growth hormone and what it does and how both of them take care of our metabolism. They dictate how many nutrients we can eat and make use of. They can pull from body fat stores, repair muscle, repair cartilage. They really are incredible compounds and they are actionable.

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Now, what does thyroid hormone do? The main role of thyroid hormone of T3 is to promote metabolism and that doesn't just mean the consumption of energy it means the utilization of energy including the buildup of tissues so it acts on all sorts of target tissues in the body it acts on muscle it acts on the liver it acts on the cartilage, it acts on the bone.

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There are things that we can do, like getting that early phase of sleep, perhaps supplementing with arginine, maybe not. hopefully getting adequate exercise, warming up properly, not making the exercise too long or too intense will help, maybe sauna or things like it, you know, deliberate safe hyperthermia, with the emphasis on safe, might be things that are of use.

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And so now hopefully you understand not just thyroid and growth hormone, but the logic that underlies thyroid hormone, growth hormone, estrogen, testosterone, why we eat, why we stop eating, cholecystokinin, ghrelin. If these names don't mean anything to you, then perhaps go back and listen to those episodes.

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But regardless, I hope that you come away from this with a deeper understanding about these hormones, which are so powerful in controlling the way our brain functions and the interplay between the brain and hormones, because it is really a bi-directional The brain is telling the body what hormones to make.

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The hormones are influencing all the tissues of the body, but also telling the brain whether or not to eat more or grow more or think more, et cetera. So I really appreciate your time and attention. If you like this podcast and you're finding it useful, please recommend it to other people. And last but not least, I thank you for your time and attention and above all for your interest in science.

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Essentials: How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we are going to talk about two hormones, thyroid hormone and its related pathways, and growth hormone and its related pathways.

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It's involved in taking fats and breaking them down into fatty acids and converting those into ATP, which is an important thing for cells to use energy. It's also involved in taking sugars and turning those into energy. And yes, it goes to adipose tissue, to fat.

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We have different kinds of fat that we'll talk about today, but it goes to white fat and it liberates or helps liberate some of the fats from those fat cells and use them for energy. And this is why higher thyroid is associated with leaner bodies. Lower thyroid is associated with less lean bodies.

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One thing that's absolutely key and is actionable, we're right there already in discussing tools, is iodine. Iodine is most common in sea salt, in kelp and in seaweed. And most people can get enough iodine from the food they eat and or the table salt they consume. Almost all table salt from all over the world, regardless of where you are, contains iodine.

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The thyroid needs iodine in order to produce thyroid hormone. Iodine combines with an amino acid that we've talked about before called L-tyrosine. L-tyrosine comes from meat, from nuts. There are some plant-based sources as well. It is the precursor to dopamine. But in the thyroid, iodine combines or works with L-tyrosine to produce T3 and T4, the thyroid hormone.

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So you absolutely need sufficient iodine, you need sufficient L-tyrosine, and then you also need something else, which is called selenium. Selenium is important in order for thyroid hormone to be made because of the way that it allows L-tyrosine and iodine to interact. And the thing is, most people aren't getting enough selenium because they don't eat foods that are high in selenium.

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Now, how much selenium you need will depend on where you live. It actually varies country by country. Some countries I found say that you should get 100 micrograms, some say 200, some say 155. The average was about 155 micrograms, the countries I looked at. People who are trying to increase thyroid levels might want to consume more selenium.

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And if you consume a vitamin, of course, you want to make sure if it has selenium that you're not overdoing it by consuming a lot of selenium rich foods either. Brazil nuts are the heavyweight champion of foods to get selenium from. It has very high concentrations of selenium. In just six or eight, Brazil nuts contain something like 550 micrograms

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which arguably are the two hormones and two systems in the body that are most significant for setting your overall level of metabolism. So metabolism is the consumption of energy, not necessarily eating, but it's the use of energy in the cells of the body.

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of selenium it's also present in fish ham of all things contains a lot of selenium for whatever reason pork does i'm not a big consumer of pork beef has some selenium but what's interesting if you look at the sources you know pork beef turkey chicken cottage cheese eggs what you want to understand is that they have something like 30 to 50 micrograms of selenium.

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So if you're not eating Brazil nuts, and I'm guessing most people aren't, and you're not eating a lot of animal-based foods, which I know many of you aren't, then you're probably not getting enough selenium. And again, you can have these levels measured, or you can just check what you're consuming and figure out whether or not you're meeting the ration that you need in order to get healthy

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levels of thyroid i also want to mention that for children their daily requirements of selenium are much lower as low as you know 30 or 40 micrograms for kids 14 years or younger and again that's micrograms not milligrams so again look into what you need but if you're somebody who's interested in keeping thyroid function

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and productive, then you certainly want to make sure you're getting enough iodine, you're getting enough selenium, and you're getting enough L-tyrosine. And it's interesting when you start looking at the various foods, especially highly processed foods, then you start to realize that perhaps many people, maybe you, are not. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep.

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Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

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Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

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It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.

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for growth of tissues for repair of tissues and also just for day-to-day maintenance of function these two hormones thyroid hormone and growth hormone we think of as related to metabolism of things in the body keeping body fat low and keeping muscles strong and tendons strong and repairing themselves etc but they are also key for brain function for the ability to maintain cognitive function throughout the lifespan

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if you're curious how thyroid actually increases metabolism allows you to eat more etc it relates to something we covered last issue which is glucose remember when you eat something blood sugar goes up insulin is secreted from the pancreas and it makes sure that blood glucose doesn't go too high which can damage tissues or too low which you make you hypoglycemic

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thyroid increases glucose uptake by various tissues in particular muscle and bone it actually can increase bone mineral density which is a really good thing as you get older when i say older i mean basically 30 and older you the reason you can recover more quickly from injuries if you have a healthy thyroid and healthy thyroid pathways is because you can consume energy.

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That energy is diverted toward bone repair and muscle repair and cartilage repair. And so the way it does this again is by increasing ATP. But the whole idea here is that selenium, L-tyrosine allow thyroid to be at healthy levels so that thyroid then can take glucose in the blood and divert it to tissues for it to be used in particular your brain.

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And that's why the ability of your brain to use glucose or ketones for that matter is going to be aided by having healthy thyroid. So do the things, take the things, eat the things that are going to allow you to have healthy levels of thyroid hormone.

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If you're concerned about having excessively high or excessively low levels of thyroid hormone, absolutely look up what the symptoms are, talk to your physician. And there are a number of good treatments. I didn't talk about prescription drugs that can improve symptoms related to hypo or hyperthyroid. Of course, They have synthesized thyroid.

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So if you don't make enough thyroid, you can take thyroid, it's by prescription. If you have too much thyroid, sometimes they'll take out the thyroid gland or they can administer drugs that will either block receptors or will interfere with some of the pathways from the brain to the pituitary or from the pituitary to the thyroid. in order to adjust thyroid hormone that way.

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So there are the big guns in terms of the treatments for different thyroid disorders, but we're not talking about thyroid disorders. We're talking about how to get and maintain thyroid levels in healthy ranges and some straightforward ways to do that through diet and supplementation. Next, we're going to talk about growth hormone.

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Growth hormone is a pretty straightforward one for you to understand now because it follows the exact same logic as thyroid hormone. In fact, their functions are so closely overlapping that you're probably going to think, why do you have these two systems? So just very briefly, growth hormone releasing hormone.

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So remember releasing means it comes from the brain, comes from the brain and tells the pituitary to release growth hormone. And then growth hormone is released into the bloodstream where it goes and acts on a ton of tissues, muscle, ligaments, bone, fat, et cetera, to increase metabolism. It sounds just like thyroid hormone and they do work in parallel.

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And that's why we've lumped them together in the same episode. They increase metabolism and repair and growth of tissues. Today, we're going to talk about the things that anyone can do to increase growth hormone. And there are reasons why certain people would want to do that.

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People that make normal quote unquote levels of growth hormone might want to do that as they age, because during puberty and development, the pituitary is churning out tons of growth hormone. It's responsible for the growth, not surprising, of the body and all its features, height just being one of those.

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And so as we age, we make less growth hormone, and that is one of the reasons why we recover more slowly from injuries. It's one of the reasons why we accumulate body fat, and it's one of the reasons why our metabolism slows. And so growth hormone replacement therapy has been tremendously popular in the last 20 years, which is not to say it doesn't carry its problems, it does.

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Here's one of the major problems with injecting growth hormone. I'm not saying people shouldn't do this if the doctor has approved it or it's in keeping with their particular life goals, but growth hormone, if it's in levels that are too high, will cause growth of all tissues.

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So not just muscle, not just reduction in body fat by metabolizing, by allowing fatty acids to be pulled out of storage and used for ATP, but it will also cause increase in growth of the heart and the lungs and the liver and the spleen. And so this is the concern with abuse of growth hormone. So we're not going to be talking about abuse of growth hormone.

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So the big theme I'd like to introduce is that metabolism isn't just about losing weight, but having a high metabolism provided it's not too high is great. It means that you will have more lean tissue, more bone and muscle and less adipose tissue fat. And we know that that's healthy. There are neurons in your brain in an area called the hypothalamus.

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We will, however, talk about tools that anyone can use to increase levels of growth hormone. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are supplement based, and some of them interact with behaviors and supplements. And what's cool about the discussion about growth hormone is that the tools that exist out there to increase growth hormone are very actionable.

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There are things that can increase growth hormone three, four, 500% or more. And even though that's a short-lived increase, they can have very powerful effects on metabolism and on repair of tissues. So let's talk about those. As always, I want to emphasize, talk to a doctor before you do anything, including remove any treatments.

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Growth hormone is released every night when you go to sleep and it's released in the early part of sleep during so-called slow wave sleep. So the two conditions that have to be met in order for growth hormone to be secreted regularly for tissue repair, et cetera, are you need to get into slow wave sleep, the so-called deep sleep, and you need blood insulin and glucose to be relatively low.

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So eating within two hours of going to sleep is going to suppress growth hormone release. That's very clear. So what is special about this early phase of sleep? What in particular about slow wave deep sleep allows the pituitary to release growth hormone? So the answer is it's a delta wave activity in the brain. Delta waves are these big giant waves of activity in the brain.

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that correlate with slow wave sleep as opposed to faster waves of activity that associate with rapid eye movement sleep. It's the delta waves of activity, these sweeping big waves of activity in the neurons that stimulate the brain to stimulate the pituitary.

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Because once you understand that, then you have something to anchor to in terms of thinking, what are the things I can do in waking that will allow me to release more growth hormone, which for most people is going to be a good thing. Now, the delta wave activity and the slow wave activity in the brain

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being very important for growth hormone release and growth hormone release being so important for metabolic functions and peeling away unwanted body fat and repairing tissues, et cetera. forces us to ask, well, what other things can we do in waking in order to increase growth hormone release? So let's start with the ones that have a potentially big effect, but are a little bit harder to access.

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And for that, I want to point toward a book, which is really kind of interesting. It's not focused on growth hormone, but the book is called Altered Traits, This is the book. It's an excellent book. Altered Traits by Goleman and Davidson. Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Very interesting book.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. My name is Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. So let's talk about emotions. Emotions are a fascinating and vital aspect of our life experience.

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And so we need to agree at the outset that emotions are complicated and yet they are tractable. They can be understood. And today we're going to talk about a lot of tools to understand what emotions are for you to understand what your emotional states mean and what they don't mean. And in doing that, that will allow you to place a value on whether or not you should hold an emotional state as true

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And it's clear from most all of the theories of emotional health that an ability to recognize when your own internal state is being driven primarily by external events as important for being able to emotionally regulate, right? People who are constantly being yanked around by the external happenings in the world, you would say are emotionally labile. They are not in control of their emotions.

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Even if they're calm all the time, if that calmness only arrives because they're in a placid environment and then you put a cracker in that environment and they freak out, well, then they're not really calm. So how much the outside environment disrupts your internal environment has everything to do with this balance of interoception and extra reception.

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And it very likely has roots in whether or not you were secure attached or insecure attached, disorganized or ambivalent as a baby. So while we can't travel back in time, there is an exercise that you can do to address, at least in this moment, whether or not you have a bias for extra reception or a bias for interoception.

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If you close your eyes right now and concentrate on the contact of any portion of your body and trying to bring as much of your attention to that point of contact as possible. And then from there, you're going to move your attention even more deeply into say the sensation of what's going on in your gut. Are you full? Are you empty? Are you hungry? Are you not? Is your heart beating at what rate?

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What's the cadence of your breathing? Basically bringing your focus and attention to everything at the surface of your skin and inward. So I'm going to do a rare thing on the Huberman Lab podcast. I'm going to introduce about five to eight seconds of silence in order to allow you to do that a little bit.

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Now try and do something that for most people actually is a little bit harder, which is to purely exterocept. Put your eyes or your ears or both on anything in your immediate space. I would say, look across the room, pick a panel on the wall or a leg of a table or something and try and bring as much of your attention to that as possible.

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And again, I'll take about five seconds of silence to allow you to exterocept. Okay, so what you probably found is that you were able to do that, but that some degree of interoception is maintained. It's hard to place 100% of your attention on something externally, unless it's really exciting, really novel. If you've ever watched a really great movie,

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presumably you're exterocepting more than you're interocepting until something exciting happens and then you feel something. You're actually tethering your emotional experience to something external. And now you can also do this dynamically. You can decide to focus internally and then externally. You can decide to split it 50%, 50% or 70, 30.

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one can develop you can develop a heightened ability to do this and the power of doing that is actually that when you are in environments where you feel like you're focused too much internally and you'd like to be focused more externally you can actually do that deliberately but as you notice it takes work these exercises are really what are at the core of these development of emotional bonds.

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or not true, whether or not it has meaning or it doesn't, as well as whether or not the emotions of others are important to you in a given context. We're going to talk a lot about development. In fact, we're going to center a lot of our discussion today around infancy and puberty.

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Because as we mentioned before, these four things, the gaze, vocalization, touch, and affect, those are happening very dynamically. So if somebody winks at you, you're paying attention to their wink, but then you also notice how you feel. This is very dynamic. So if it seems overwhelming to try and interocept and exterocept and then shift the balance, you do that all the time.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1262.223

Your brain and nervous system are fantastic at doing this. Now, some people have a very hard time breaking out of a very strongly interoceptive mode. Some people have a harder time breaking out of their exteroceptive mode. It's very interesting to note the extent to which we have biases in how interoceptive or exteroceptive we are. Remember those three axes that we talked about earlier.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1286.699

You have valence, good or bad. You have alertness, alert or calm, and you have interoceptive or exteroceptive bias. Early in development, you start off with this interoceptive bias. You are starting to develop expectations, predictions about how the outside world is going to work. And you are trying to figure out the reliability of outside events and people and where things are reliable.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1313.875

when people are reliable, we are able to give up more of our interoception. There's literally trust that our interoceptive needs, our internal needs will be met through bonds and actions of others. And this starts to veer toward the discussion about neglect and trauma. We are going to devote entire episodes, probably an entire month to trauma and PTSD, but these

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1337.845

those have roots in what we're talking about now. And it's important to internalize and understand what we're talking about now in order to get the most out of those future conversations. So now I want to just pause, just shelve the discussion about interoception, exteroception for a moment. And I want to talk about what is arguably the second most, if not equally important,

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1360.502

aspect of your development as it relates to emotionality. And as it relates to this, what I call trust, but this ability to predict whether or not things in the outside world are reliable or not reliable in terms of their ability to help you meet your interoceptive needs. And that period is puberty. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1383.869

AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

139.677

We're also going to talk about tools for enhancing one's emotional range and for navigating difficult emotional situations. I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm not a therapist, but I do have some background in psychology.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1400.662

I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since. I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1422.099

Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1444.457

So up until now, we've been talking mainly about psychology, not a lot of biology, not a lot of mechanism. And now we're going to transition into talking about mechanism, hormones, receptors, et cetera. Puberty is a absolute biological event. It has a beginning. And it has a specific definition, which is the transition into reproductive maturity. So there are a lot of hormonal changes.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1467.763

Yes, there are also a lot of brain changes and most people don't realize it, but the brain changes occur first. The brain turns on the hormone systems that allow puberty to occur. One of the more interesting molecules that triggers puberty in all individuals is something called kispeptin, K-I-S-S-P-E-P-T-I-N, kispeptin. Kispeptin is made by the brain and it stimulates

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1495.154

large amounts of a different hormone called GNRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, to be released. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone then causes the release of another hormone called something called luteinizing hormone, or LH, which travels in the bloodstream and stimulates the ovaries of females to produce estrogen and the testes of males to produce testosterone.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1519.378

This is interesting because at this point, the testes in males start churning out tons of testosterone in order to trigger the development of secondary sexual characteristics, body hair and all the others, deepening of voice, et cetera. And in females, estrogen is doing various other things, breast development, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

153.666

And today I'm going to be drawing from the psychology greats, not me, but from the greats of psychology who studied emotion, who studied emotional development and linking that to the neuroscience of emotion. Because nowadays we understand a lot about the chemicals and the hormones and the neural circuits in the brain and body that underlie emotion.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1538.585

So that's how puberty happens at the biological level, gets triggered by leptin and cispeptin. And then this young child, is now a different creature to some to some extent, not just because they're reproductively competent, of course, but because there's a shift in a number of the things that underlie these social bonds.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1560.652

There are there's a marked shift in a number of the things that allow children and adults to engage in predictive behavior about each other. And most of what consumes the minds and

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1575.216

waking hours of adolescents and children who have gone through puberty and going through puberty is questions about how they relate to social structures, who they can rely on and how they can make reliable predictions in the world now that they have more agency, that they are physically changed.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1593.629

In fact, you could argue that puberty is the fastest rate of maturation that you'll go through at any point in your life. It's the largest change that you'll go through at any point in your life in terms of who you are. because your biology has fundamentally changed at the level of your brain and your bodily organs, all your organs from the skin inward.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1613.64

So I want to visit a little bit of the research about some of the core needs that occur during puberty and adolescence. So there's a terrific review article that was published in the journal Nature about the biology of adolescence and puberty, as well as some of the core needs and demands that have to be met for successful emotional maturation during that time.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1640.315

We will provide a link to that, but I just want to highlight a few of the things that they place in the final table. I don't want to go through all the results right now because you could do that on your own if you like. They mainly highlight a lot of the changes in neurons and neural circuits. For instance, I'll just highlight one.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1658.504

There's a connection between the dopamine centers in the brain and an area of the brain that's involved in emotion and dispersal. Dispersal is very interesting. What you observe in animals and humans is that around the end of adolescence and during the transition to puberty, both because of changes in the brain and changes in hormones,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1681.403

there's an intense desire on the part of the child to get further and further away from primary caregivers. Mostly there's a desire to start spending more time with friends, more time with peers and less time with adults. So there's something about these hormones that don't just allow sexual reproduction. They don't just change the brain and bodily organs and the shape of us. They also,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1707.93

bias us towards dispersal, getting further and further away from primary caregivers in particular. And what's interesting is during puberty, there's increased connection, connectivity, as we call it, between the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in motivation and decision making, being able to suppress action for making long-term goals possible, as well as dopamine centers and the amygdala.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

172.792

So while there's no one single universally true theory of emotion, At the intersection of many of the existing theories, there are really some ground truths. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, 8sleep. 8sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1733.79

So there's this really broad integration and testing. I think this is the key element here, testing of circuits for emotions and reward as they relate to decisions. And I think that's useful because when you look at the behavior of adolescents and teens, they are testing social interactions. They are testing physical interactions with the world.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1753.197

Oftentimes they're engaging in unsafe behavior and you can't just, I would never try and justify that with the underlying neurology, but the neuroscience points to increased connectivity between areas of the brain that are related to emotionality and to threat detection like the amygdala, but also reward. So it's a time of testing behaviorally how different behaviors lead to success or not.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1780.192

It's how different behaviors lead to fear states or not. You can start to map the neurology onto some of this emotional exploration. I do realize that this episode is about emotions. Puberty is a time in which the internal state of

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1794.58

the person or the animal is being sampled and tested against different extra receptive events only now they are able to guide those events with more agency the child or the adolescent is now able the teen really is able to now sample many many more extra receptive events through behavior and so

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1816.585

Adolescence and puberty is really seen as the period of development in which one self samples for these two elements that we talked about at the beginning, which are how do I form bonds and how do I make predictions about what will make me feel good at a level of interoception.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1834.885

But in terms of the biology, it's clear that there's this stage of development where more autonomy, more physical capability is triggered by these hormone changes in the brain and these peptide changes in the brain and body. And that nonetheless brings us back to the exact same model that we started with in infancy of alert or calm, feel good,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1858.027

or feel bad, primarily exterocepting, primarily interocepting. So I keep going back to this. I'm sort of like a repeating record on that because the same core algorithm, the same core function is at play throughout the lifespan.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1872.474

And that's a useful framework, in my opinion, because it allows you to sort through all the data and information that's out there about, well, this area, the stria terminalis is active or the basolateral amygdala is active or gray matter, thickening or this hormone or that hormone and return to a kind of kernel of certainly not exhaustive truth.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

189.51

Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1891.481

It doesn't cover all aspects of emotionality, but at least establishes some groundwork from which you can start to evaluate how different behaviors might or might not make sense, how certain emotional responses might or might not make sense, regardless of the age of the person or the organism. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1913.111

Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1932.88

It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1945.246

To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1963.937

There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

1986.111

There's a theory of emotional development that I find particularly interesting, which is from Alan Shore at UCLA that talks about how most of our testing of bonds and relationships is this seesawing back and forth between very dopaminergic, so driven by dopamine, or serotonergic, driven by serotonin, states. And this starts with infant and mother or infant and father.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2009.096

Healthy emotional development clearly begins with an ability for the caretaker and child to be in calm, peaceful, soothing, touch-oriented, eye-gazing type of behaviors. Those really drive serotonin, the endogenous opioid system. things that are very calming and are centered around pleasure with the here and now, as well as excited states of what we're going to do next.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2036.092

There's actually a kind of characteristic sign of the dopaminergic interaction where both caretaker and child are wide-eyed. The pupils dilate, that's a signature of arousal. They get really excited. Oftentimes the baby will look away if it gets really excited. Those are signatures of dopamine release in the body. And in adolescence, these same things carry forward where their good bonds are,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2060.214

achieved through hanging around, watching TV, just kind of being there, you know, playing video games or texting together or talking, whatever it is that the soothing local activity happens to be, as well as adventure and things that are exciting. And so this kind of seesawing back and forth between the different reward systems.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

207.447

And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2079.159

seems to be the basis from which healthy emotional bonds are created. We can't have a complete conversation about emotions and bonds and social connection without talking about oxytocin. Oxytocin has come to such prominence in the last decade or so and seems to be everywhere. Anytime you hear a discussion about neuroscience in the brain or hormones in the brain,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2104.358

Oxytocin is released in response to lactation in females. It is released in response to sexual interactions. It is released in response to non-sexual touch. It's released in males and females. And indeed it's involved in pair bonding and the establishment of social bonds in general. Oh, my God. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

222.859

I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod cover called the Pod Four Ultra. The Pod Four Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity.

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

2255.12

I don't know. I don't know. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

238.071

I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

256.142

If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. If we want to understand emotions, we have to look at where emotions first develop.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

26.005

It's fair to say that emotions make up most of what we think of as our experience of life. Even the things we do, our behaviors and the places we go and the people we end up encountering in our life, And all of that really funnels into our emotional perception of what those things mean, whether or not they made us happy or sad or depressed or lonely or awe-inspiring.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

278.056

And the rule that every good neuroanatomist knows is that if you want to understand what a part of the brain does, you have to address two questions. You have to know what connections does that brain area make? And you need to know what's called the developmental origin of that structure. What are the brain areas for emotion? And nowadays there's a lot of debate about this.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

298.338

For years, it was thought that there might be circuits, meaning connections in the brain that generate the feeling of being happy or circuits that generate the feeling of being sad, et cetera. That's been challenged.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

309.987

And yet I think there's good evidence for circuits in the brain, such as limbic circuits and other circuits that shift our overall states or our overall level of alertness or calmness, or whether or not they bias us toward viewing the outside world or paying more attention to what's going on inside our bodies. But the important thing to understand is that Emotions do arise in the brain and body.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

333.916

And if we want to understand how emotions work, we have to look how emotions are built. And they are built during infancy, adolescence, and puberty. And then it continues into adulthood. But the groundwork is laid down early in development when we are small children. You were born into this world without really any understanding of the things around you.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

358.804

Now, there are two ways that you can interact with the world, and you're always doing them more or less to some degree at the same time. Those are interoception, paying attention to what's going on inside you, what you feel internally, and exteroception, paying attention to what's going on outside you.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

375.95

Hold that in mind, please, because the fact that you're both interocepting and exterocepting is true for your entire life, and it sets the foundation for understanding emotions. It's absolutely critical. As an infant, you didn't have any knowledge of what you needed. You didn't understand hunger. You didn't understand cold or heat or any of that.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

397.863

When you needed something, you experienced that as anxiety. You would feel an increase in alertness if you had to use the bathroom. You would feel an increase in alertness if you were hungry. And you would vocalize, you would cry out, you would act agitated, you might coo, you might do a number of different things. And then your caregiver, whoever that might have been, would respond to that.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

420.981

So this is actually really important to understand that a baby, when you were a baby and when I was a baby, we didn't have any sense of the outside world, except that it responded to our acts of anxiety, essentially. all developmental psychologists agree that babies lack the ability to make cognitive sense of the outside world.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

440.515

But in this feeling of anxiety and registering one's own internal state, and then crying out to the outside world, either through crying or subtle vocalizations, or even just cooing, making some noise, we start to develop a relationship with the outside world in which our internal states, our shifts in anxiety, start to drive requests and people come and respond to those requests.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

465.094

And this gets to the basis of what emotions are about, which are emotions are really about forming bonds and being able to predict things in the world. And at this point, I actually just want to pause and mention a really interesting tool that is trying to address this question of what are emotions and what do they consist of that you can use if you like. This is an app. I didn't develop it.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

489.802

I don't have any relationship to them, but the app was developed by people at Yale and it's called Mood Meter. What they're trying to do is put more nuance, more subtlety on our and our language for emotions and be able to allow you to predict how you're going to feel in the future. I'm on the app right now, and I know you can't see this, but it's called Mood Meter.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

50.184

Now, one thing that is absolutely true is that everyone's perception of emotion is slightly different. meaning your idea of happy is very likely different than my idea of what a state of happiness is.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

512.174

You know, it says to me, hi, Andrew, how are you right now? And I click the little tab that says, I feel, and I can either pick high energy and unpleasant, high energy and pleasant, low energy unpleasant or low energy pleasant. And I would say right now I feel high energy pleasant. So I just revealed to you how I feel.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

532.508

So I click on that and then it gives you a gallery of colors and you just move your finger to the location where you think it matches most. And as you do that, little words pop up. So say motivated, cheerful, inspired. I would say I'm feeling right now cheerful. So you click that and then you just go to the next window and it just says, what are you doing?

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

550.997

And this feels like play to me, but I'm going to call it work. And then that's it. And then what it does is it basically starts to collect data on you. You're giving it information and it starts to link that to other features that you allow it access to if you like. And it starts helping you be able to predict how you're going to feel at different times a day.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

570.491

And it points to a couple of really interesting features, which is that we don't really have enough language to describe all the emotional states. And yet there's some core truths to what makes up an emotion.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

583.382

This can really help people, kids and adults, understand better what they're feeling and why, and when best to engage in certain activities, and thankfully, when best to avoid certain activities too. So the way this works is the following. you need to ask yourself at any point, you could do this right now if you like, what's your level of autonomic arousal?

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

606.426

Autonomic arousal is just the continuum, the range of alert to calm. So if you're in a panic right now, you are like 10 out of 10 on the arousal scale. If you're asleep, you're probably not comprehending what I'm saying, although maybe a little bit, but let's say you're very drowsy, you might be at a one or a two.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

629.193

And then there's this other axis, this other question, which is what we call valence. Now, valence is a value. Do you feel good or bad? I would say I feel pretty good right now on a scale of one to 10. I'm like, I don't know, I feel like a seven. So I'm alert and I feel pretty good.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

63.594

And we know this also for color vision, for instance, even though the cells in your eye and my eye that perceive the color red are identical right down to the genes that they express, we can be certain based on experimental evidence and what are called psychophysical studies,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

647.298

And then there's a third thing, which is how much we are interocepting and how much we are exterocepting, all right? So how much our attention is focused internally on what we're feeling and how much it's focused externally. And this is always going to be in a dynamic balance.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

664.972

So for instance, if you're really, really stressed, oftentimes that puts you in a position to be really in touch with what's going on in your body. If you start having a lot of somatic, a lot of bodily sensations, like your heart is beating so fast that you can't ignore it, then you're really strongly interoceptive.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

681.518

So there's these three things, how alert or sleepy you are, that's one, how good or bad you feel, that's two, and then whether or not most of your attention is directed outward or whether or not it's directed inward. And much of what we call emotions are made up by those three things. Let's return to the infant. There's the baby in the crib. It's mostly interocepting.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

703.47

As caregivers bring it what it needs, you hope, milk, diaper changes, et cetera, a warm blanket if it's cold, pull off the blanket when the baby's fussing and it's too warm, because babies get too warm also, it starts to exterocept. the baby starts to look into the outside world and start making predictions.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

723.329

It starts wondering how much it needs to cry or predicting, well, if I cry like a little bit, then mom comes over and I get my milk. Babies are starting to evaluate and do all this, but they're not doing it consciously. They're doing this in order to relieve anxiety.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

742.448

As a young creature, an infant and young toddler, you were mainly focused inward and you started to understand what was going on outward as a way of predicting what would bring you relief, what would remove your anxiety. And that's where the fundamental rules of your experience, your emotional experience were laid down.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

761.394

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

778.044

But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

795.401

Second of all, it can provide support. in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

81.59

that your idea of the most intense red is going to be very different than my idea of the most intense red if we were given a selection of 10 different reds and asked which one is most intense, which one looks most red. And that seems crazy. You would think that something as simple as color would be universal, and yet it's not.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

812.172

Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

831.303

Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. So now let's talk about what kind of baby you were, because that actually informs your emotionality now. These are classic, they're actually famous experiments done by Bowlby and Ainsworth. This is this classic experiment of what was called the strange situation task.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

853.487

in which, and I'm describing it very coarsely here, I realize, but a mother and child come into the laboratory, the baby and the mother or father play together for a bit, and then the mother leaves. The mother leaves for some period of time and then comes back. And the research is devoted to understanding the response of the child when the caretaker, the mother or the father returns.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

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Bowlby and Ainsworth and many of their scientific offspring and colleagues identified at least four patterns that babies display when their caretaker returns and they group these into group a b c d so much so that the kids were referred to as a babies b babies c babies or d babies the first babies are the a babies when their caretaker would return

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the infant would respond with happiness, with what looked like delight. They would go to the caretaker, they seemed happy. These are referred to as secure attached kids. The B babies, as they're called, were less likely to seek comfort from their caregiver when the caregiver would return.

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So they would sometimes continue to play with their toys or they would be with the, they had an adult in the room while the parent was gone, they would stay with them. These were referred to as avoidant babies. The C babies would respond to the return of the caregiver with acts of annoyance. They seem kind of angry. And those were referred to as ambivalent babies.

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And then the third category, the D babies were the disorganized babies. The child avoided interactions with everyone and their behavior didn't really change whether or not the caregiver was there or not. This work, this classic work, opened up a huge set of important questions that related to what is the reestablishment of the bond really about?

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I mean, what's actually being figured out here is not whether or not there are four categories of babies, that's interesting, but it presumably is more interesting to focus on What is it that defines a really good bond, a secure attachment or an insecure attachment or an avoidant attachment? And the four things are gaze,

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Essentials: The Science of Emotions & Relationships

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literally eye contact, vocalizations, so what we say and how we say it, affect or emotion, so the way that we express, you know, crying, smiling, et cetera, and touch. But gaze, vocalization, affect and touch are really the core of this thing that we call social bonds and emotionality.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was. I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.

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Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.

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Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.

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So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.

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So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Next, I'd like to move to exercise and how particular timing and types of exercise can vastly improve fat loss. The topic of exercise is a kind of controversial one.

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I think the most simple way, the most fluid way to have this conversation about exercise and fat loss is in terms of three general types of training. And those are high intensity interval training, so called HIIT, H-I-I-T. So high intensity interval training, sprint interval training, so that's going to be very high intensity or S-I-T, or moderate intensity continuous training, M-I-C-T.

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So we've got HIIT, SIT, and MICT. If you'd like to map this to VO2max, SIT, this sprint interval training was defined as all out greater than 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that last eight to 30 seconds interspersed with less intense recovery periods.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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What portion depends on a number of factors, but that simple formula is important. So a calorie is a calorie as a unit of energy, and we need to accept and acknowledge this calories in,

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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So this would be sprinting down field for eight to 30 seconds, then maybe walking back for about a minute or two and then sprinting again and then continuing. So that would be SIT. HIIT, H-I-I-T. It's defined as submaximal, so 80 to 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that lasts 60 to 240 seconds interspersed with less intense recovery periods.

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MICT, okay, this moderate intensity continuous training is steady state cardio, sometimes called zone two cardio these days on the internet. which is performed continuously for 20 to 60 minutes at moderate intensity of 40 to 60% of VO2 max, or if you prefer heart rate, 55 to 70% of max heart rate, okay?

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So we can think about high, medium, and low intensity exercise, although low intensity usually means that you could carry on a conversation or maybe you'd have to gasp every few steps or so while trying to talk and run.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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That's I think going to be the most useful way to have this conversation that we're having now because there's so many different forms of exercise that people do and intensity is important. Let's ask the question that I think many people are wondering about, which is, is it better, meaning do you burn more fat if you do your exercise fasted?

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And fasted in this respect could be that you wake up in the morning, you've been fasting all night, you just hydrate and you exercise. For short periods of training, it doesn't really seem to matter whether or not you eat before training or you don't if your goal is fat oxidation.

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at a period of about 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, there's a switch over point whereby if you ate before the exercise, you will reduce, excuse me, you will burn far less fat from the 90 minute point onward than you would if you had gone into the training fasted.

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Now, there are also studies that point to the fact that you don't have to wait to 90 minutes in order to get this enhanced fat burning effect. If one does high intensity training or even the very high intensity forms of training like sprints or squats or deadlifts or any kind of activity that can't be maintained for more than these eight or I would say up to 60 seconds.

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meaning calories ingested versus calories burned formula, but the calories burned portion is strongly influenced by a number of things that you can control that can greatly accelerate or increase the amount of adipose tissue or the proportion of adipose tissue that you burn in response to exercise and food.

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So a set of lifting weights repeated, repeated. If that's done, for anywhere from 20 minutes, so weight training, or power lifting, or these kinds of things, or kettlebell swings, or up to 60 minutes, well then the switchover point in which you can burn more fat if you go into that fasted comes earlier.

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And this makes sense because there's nothing holy about the 90 minute point for medium intensity zone two cardio. That 90 minute point is the point in which the body shifts over from mainly burning glycogen, basically sugar that comes from muscles or the liver and realizes this is going on for a while. I'm going to shift over to a storage site that is in reserve, like body fat.

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This is something that has to do with the milieu of various hormones. What has to happen is insulin has to go down far enough. So if you ate before the exercise, you'd have an increase in insulin. If you ate carbohydrates, you'd have a bigger increase in insulin. Fat and proteins indeed will have lower amounts of insulin and fasting will give you the lowest amount of insulin.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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Well, then that switch over point is going to come earlier in the exercise. Think about if you were to do something high intensity for 20, 30, 40 minutes, so maybe lift weights and then get into zone two cardio. If you were fasted, the literature says that you're going to burn more body fat per unit time than if you had eaten before or during the exercise. So what does this mean?

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This means if you want to burn more body fat, if it's in your protocols and you've been approved to do this safely, Exercise intensely for 20 to 60 minutes. The higher the intensity, obviously the shorter that bout is going to be and then move over into zone two cardio. And if you do that fasted, then indeed you will burn a higher percentage of body fat.

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But if you can't even get to the exercise, if you're somebody who just can't do the training at all, you're unwilling to, or you're incapable of training, unless you eat something, then obviously eating something makes the most sense.

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And what you eat prior to exercise, that's a whole other biz that people argue about and fight about whether or not you should go into it with low carbohydrates or higher carbohydrates, all of that. But in general, the theme there is very simple, which is that you want insulin levels to be pretty low if your goal is body fat reduction.

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This could be distilled into a simple protocol whereby three or four times a week you do high intensity training followed by either nothing or followed by low intensity training, especially if you're able to do that fasted. And I should just mention that none of this stuff about fasted is about performance.

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If you want to perform really well, you want to, this is for reasons of performance and you want to, you know, it's for a sport or a competition. It's not for body fat purposes. Well, then all of this kind of falls away and is modified by what's ideal to eat for performance. But what we're talking about today is how to optimize body fat, body fat loss.

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So I think you get the principle now, but you should all be asking yourselves as scientists of yourselves, why would it be that certain patterns of exercise would lead to more or less fat loss? And again, it has to do with the neurons. It has to do with how we engage the nervous system. So while non-exercise activity induced thermogenesis, NEAT, the fidgeting, and cold can induce thermogenesis,

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Today, we're going to talk about the fact that your body fat of various kinds, and there are several kinds of body fat, are actually innervated by neurons. Neurons connect to your body fat and can change the probability that that body fat will be burned or not. So your nervous system is the master controller of this process.

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by engaging shiver type movement or low level movements. Big movements that are of very high intensity, meaning they require a lot of effort, deploy a lot of adrenaline, epinephrine from our neurons and signal particular types and amounts of fat thermogenesis, fat oxidation.

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Whereas low level intensity exercise, low or moderate intensity exercise, you know, walking, running, biking, where you can do that easily, there's not very much adrenaline release.

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So adrenaline and AKA epinephrine is really the final common path by which movement of any kind, whether or not it's low level shiver or whether or not it's lifting a barbell, sprinting up a hill or doing a long bike ride, adrenaline is the effector of fat loss. It's the trigger and it's the effector.

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So now I want to turn our attention to compounds that increase epinephrine and adrenaline, as well as compounds that work outside the adrenaline epinephrine pathway to increase the rates of fat loss.

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I almost always save compounds and supplements and things of that sort to the end, because I do believe that people should look first toward behavioral tools and an understanding of the science before they look toward a supplement or a particular thing that they can extract from diet.

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And this is mainly to try and shift people away from the kind of magic pill phenomenon or the idea that there is a magic pill because there really isn't. And frankly, there never will be, but there are some compounds that can greatly increase fat oxidation and mobilization and understanding which compounds increase oxidation or mobilization

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can be very useful if your goal is to accelerate fat loss. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.

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We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios.

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Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

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I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. There are things that people can ingest that will allow them to oxidize more fat.

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And it plays a strong role in the calories out, the calories burned component. So let's talk about fat utilization. Let's talk about how fat is converted into energy which is sometimes also called fat burning. There's two parts to this process. One is fat mobilization. And the second is fat oxidation or utilization. And that's a process called lipolysis.

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And that occurs mainly by increasing the amount of epinephrine that is released from neurons that innervate fat tissue. One of the more common ones is one that you may already be using, which is caffeine. It's well established that caffeine can enhance performance if you're caffeine adapted. Now, caffeine for burning more fat, for oxidizing and mobilizing more fat is an interesting one.

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It can be effective at dosages up to 400 milligrams. 400 milligrams is roughly a cup and a half of coffee or two cups of coffee. Nowadays, there's a lot more caffeine

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So if you go to a typical cafe and you were to get their medium size, that would have close to a gram of caffeine, which is why if you're a regular caffeine consumer and you don't get that gram of caffeine in your coffee each day, you will get a headache. It can cause constriction and dilation of blood vessels in ways that's complicated, but you'll get a headache.

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Caffeine can enhance the amount of fat that you burn in any duration of exercise. And it can shift the percentage of fat that you oxidize compared to glycogen. Unless you take that caffeine and it ramps you up so much that you're training really, really intensely. The bottom line is if you like caffeine and you can use it safely,

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ingesting somewhere between 100 and 400 milligrams of caffeine prior to exercise somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes before exercise can be beneficial if we're talking about fat oxidation, burning more body fat. And if caffeine is the kind of the entry point for most people of using compounds to increase the rate or percentage of fat loss in exercise and even at rest,

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What are some of the other things that are useful and interesting? Well, in terms of tools that are actionable and have reasonable safety margins, I've talked before about something called GLP-1. This is something that can be triggered by the ingestion of yerba mate. Mate increases GLP-1. GLP-1 is in the glucagon pathway. So let's just quickly return to our biochemistry.

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As you recall, fat is mobilized from body fat stores. and then it's burned up, it's oxidized in cells. It actually needs to be converted into ATP and those fatty acids are essentially converted into ATP in the mitochondria of the cell. High insulin prevents that from happening and glucagon facilitates that process. glucagon facilitates that process through increases in GLP-1.

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The short takeaway is mate increases GLP-1 and yes, increases the percentage of fat that you'll burn. It increases fat burning. And that is especially true, it turns out from the scientific literature, if you ingest mate prior to exercise of any kind. So if you want to burn more fat, Drinking mate before exercise is good.

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Drinking it at rest when you're not exercising will also help shift your metabolism toward enhanced burning of fat by increasing fat oxidation. Now there's a whole category of pharmaceuticals that's being developed right now that are in late stage trials or are in use for the treatment of diabetes, which capitalize on this GLP-1 pathway.

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They go by various names and there are people on the internet who are selling these things. They are prescription drugs. And I want to emphasize that they are prescription drugs. And you obviously wouldn't want to use any of these without a prescription and a requirement.

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It does seem that they are effective for the treatment of certain kinds of diabetes and lead to fairly significant weight loss and reduction in appetite. So this is kind of the modern version of GLP-1 is pharmaceuticals of GLP-1 metabolism are drugs such as semaglutide. I can never pronounce this. I can't seem to pronounce many things, it seems. Semaglutide is the way I would pronounce it.

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In any case, this compound increases GLP-1. It's actually a GLP-1 analog in some cases, and they go by various types of trade names. And again, the semaglutide is the prescription version of the, it's kind of the heavy artillery GLP-1 stimulant. And again, should be only explored with a prescription. So those are the compounds that really increase fat oxidation directly.

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Fat cells can be visceral around our viscera, our organs, or they can be subcutaneous under our skin. Stored fat has two parts that are relevant here. It's got the fatty acid part, and that's the part that your body can use. And that's attached to something called glycerol, and they're linked by a backbone. To mobilize fat, you got to break the backbone between glycerol and these fatty acids, okay?

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There are going to be a number of things that impact insulin and glucagon. that are going to shift the body toward more fat burning. And so for instance, berberine, which comes from a plant or metformin are compounds that are now in kind of growing use for reducing blood glucose.

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They are very potent at reducing blood glucose, which will reduce insulin because the job of the hormone insulin is to essentially manage glucose in the bloodstream. So there are huge differences gallery of compounds that will reduce insulin and thereby can increase fat oxidation.

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And that's because, as I mentioned before, fat oxidation, this conversion of fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria is inhibited by insulin. So if you keep insulin low, you're going to increase that process, which brings us full circle back to the issue of diet and nutrition.

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there is really solid evidence from the Gardner lab at Stanford and from other labs showing that when you look at different diets, you look at low fat diets, high fat diets, keto diets, intermittent fasting, provided people stick to their particular diet, it doesn't really matter which diet you follow. You can still get a caloric deficit and you get weight loss.

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Adherence, however, is always an issue. And so what I always say is that you want to use the eating plan that is obviously beneficial to your health, but the one that allows you to adhere to whatever it is that the particular nutrition protocol is, right? If you can't stick with something, then it's not very worthwhile.

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about the science of tools for fat loss.

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But from the purely scientific standpoint, there's also an advantage to keeping insulin low. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you go to zero carbohydrate.

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I've talked before about my preferred way of eating is to go low or no carbohydrate throughout the day for alertness, to get that adrenaline release and the focus that goes with it, et cetera, and the ability to think and move and do all the things I need to do during the day. And then I eat carbohydrates at night because it facilitates the transition to sleep. That's what works for me.

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But when insulin is low, you do place your system in a position to oxidize more fat. And so that's why I think a lot of people do see benefit from lower carbohydrate or moderate carbohydrate diets, because when insulin is low, you are in a position to oxidize more fat, both from exercise and at rest. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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That's accomplished by an enzyme called lipase, but you can forget all that if you want. Remember, we're just trying to mobilize fat. So the first step is to get those fatty acids moving around in the bloodstream, to get them out of those fat cells. And then they can travel and be used for energy. They're going to go into cells that can use them for energy.

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And once they are inside those cells, they're still not burned up. You need to oxidize them. They need to be moved into the mitochondria and then they can be converted into ATP, into energy. So just to really zoom out again to make sure I don't lose anybody, you got to mobilize the fat, then you have to oxidize the fat.

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And many of the things that the nervous system can do is to increase the mobilization of fat, but also the oxidation of fat. So what are these neurons that connect to fat doing? What are they releasing exactly? How do they actually increase fat mobilization and how do they increase fat oxidation, burning of fat? Well, there are a couple of things that they release that encourage that process.

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And the main one that you need to know about is epinephrine or adrenaline. The conversion of these fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria of cells is favored by adrenaline. And adrenaline is released from two sources. Adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands, which sit atop our kidneys and our lower back.

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And it's also released from the so-called sympathetic nervous system, although that name is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with sympathy, has to do with stimulating alertness and promoting action of the body.

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It was thought for a long time that adrenaline swimming around in your body of when you're fasted because fasting can increase adrenaline or when you're engaging in intense exercise or when you're stressed is going to promote fat oxidation. That's actually not the case. the adrenaline that stimulates fat oxidation, the burning of fat is coming from neurons that actually connect to the fat.

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Today's episode is mainly going to be focused on how the nervous system, neurons, and some of the cells they collaborate with like glia and macrophages, how those encourage or can encourage accelerated fat loss, because it turns out they can. Remember, your nervous system, which includes your brain and your spinal cord and all the connections that they make with the organs of the body,

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It's a local process. And this is very important because it means that what you do, the specific patterns of movements and the specific environment you create that can stimulate these particular neurons to activate fat meaning to release fat, to mobilize it, and then to burn it is going to be a powerful lever that you can use in order to increase fat loss.

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Okay, so let's talk about how to activate the nervous system in ways that it promotes more liberation, movement, mobilization of fat, and more oxidation of fat. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.

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That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot.

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They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.

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With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling. They're incredibly delicious.

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And given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. So one of the most powerful ways to stimulate epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline, from these neurons is through movement.

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The type of movement that I'm referring to is extremely subtle, shivering movement. is a strong stimulus for the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, into fat and the increase in fat oxidation and mobilization. And there are other subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase fat metabolism and fat loss.

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There was a group in England during the 1960s and 70s that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement can greatly increase fat loss. This is the work of Rothwell and Stock. It's very famous in the thermogenesis literature. And I learned about this early on when I was an undergraduate and I asked, how did they come across this? And here's how the story goes.

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They were aware that some people overeat and yet don't put on weight. Other people overeat even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate extra adipose tissue. Now, this is long before all the discussions about microbiome and hormone factors and as long before many of the hormone factors besides insulin had even been discovered.

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What they did was they examined people who overate and did not gain weight. And what they observed was that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement throughout the day. In other words, they were fidgeters and that's what they call them.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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And in 2015, and again, in 2017, there've been studies that have explored this using some modern metabolic tracking and indeed simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter, bouncing your knee, standing up and pacing several times or many times throughout the day. considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss when people were ingesting the same amount of food.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

58.084

governs everything. The nervous system and the role of the brain and other neurons has been vastly overlooked in the discussion about losing fat.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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If they overate, they were able to compensate and burn off that food. So for people that are overweight, who are kind of averse to exercise, fidgeting might actually be a good entry point. Now that's great. And you can think about the protocols, but I want to, nest that protocol in what I said before, which is that fat is controlled by these neurons and the epinephrine they release.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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Those subtle movements of our core musculature not just the core, but all our limbs and our musculature, those low level movements, they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons and they stimulate the mobilization of fat. And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates. So what's the protocol? Fidget.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

639.257

If you're really interested in burning calories and you already exercise, you want to burn more, or you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise for whatever reason,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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fidgeting movements, staccato movements, standing up, walking around, pacing, all the sort of nervous activities that we're so critical of in other people and sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy. And while this probably won't compensate for chronic overeating,

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

67.887

Now, I would be remiss and I'd probably come under a pretty considerable attack if I didn't just acknowledge upfront a core truth of metabolic science and also of neuroscience, frankly, which is that calories in versus calories out, meaning how many calories you ingest versus how many calories you burn is the fundamental and most important formula in this business of fat loss and weight management in general.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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the caloric burn from this is considerable and very likely can offset a meal that had excessive calories or a kind of steady state of eating too much. Now it should make sense why shivering is one of the strongest stimuli that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss. Now, shivering is almost always associated with cold. We think shivering, we think cold, because when we get cold, we shiver.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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And there are two ways that shivering can increase fat loss. And there are several ways that you can use shivering, you can leverage shivering, and you can leverage cold to accelerate fat loss, but you have to do it correctly. And most of the people... that are using cold and frankly suggesting cold as a means to increase metabolism fat loss are suggesting the exact wrong protocol.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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Most people out there are using cold exposure, typically by taking cold showers, or by getting into cold water of some other kind, a lake or a river or a cold bath or an ice bath. Since today we're talking about accelerating fat loss through the use of science-based tools, I want to emphasize a study that was published in Nature just a couple of years ago showing

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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exactly how cold increases metabolism and fat loss, okay? So we have several kinds of fat, three kinds in fact. We have white fat, white adipose tissue, and we have brown fat or brown adipose tissue. And there's a third kind, which is beige adipose tissue. White fat is the type that we traditionally think of as fat, subcutaneous fat. And it is not particularly rich in mitochondria.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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It is there as an energy storage site. And we have to mobilize the fat out as we talked about before and burn it up elsewhere. Brown fat largely exists between our shoulder blades and on the back of our neck, between the scapulae, and it's rich with mitochondria, which is why it's called brown fat. And brown fat has a particular,

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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biochemical cascade whereby it can take food energy and it can take food basically, break it down and convert it into energy within those cells. But unlike fatty acids from white fat, which have to travel elsewhere, get broken down in mitochondria and convert into ATP, et cetera, used by the mitochondria rather, Brown fat is thermogenic. It can actually use energy directly.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

837.017

Cold causes the release of adrenaline from your adrenals, and it causes the release of epinephrine from these neurons that connect to fat. The paper published in Nature shows that it is shivering itself. that causes the brown fat to increase your burning, your burn rate and your metabolism. And it works like this.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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When you get into cold and you shiver, the shivering, that low level movement of the muscle, those small movements, triggers the release of a molecule called succinate, S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate. And succinate acts on the brown fat to increase brown fat thermogenesis and fat burning overall.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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And the question then is how long to get into that cold environment and how cold should that environment be? So first let's talk about how long to get into that cold environment. It turns out that if you want to trigger the shiver, what you want to do is to get into the cold and then get out of the cold and typically not dry off. and then get back into the cold and out of the cold.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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That will definitely stimulate more shivering than just getting into the cold itself. So how cold should it be? And look, if you get into water that's very, very cold, it can actually shock your heart. It can actually give you a heart attack if it's truly, truly ice cold and you're not adapted to that. So proceed with caution, please. I'm not a physician and I don't want to see anyone get hurt.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

930.869

Just cold enough to be uncomfortable is a good place to start. So for some of you, that's going to be 60 degrees. For some of you, that's going to be 55 degrees. For some of you, it's going to be high 30s, right? Depends on how cold adapted you are.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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So what you need to do is find a temperature that you can get into one to five, probably one to three times a week if you really want this to accelerate fat loss. And you want to get in until you just start to shiver. And then you want to get out and not dry off. Wait anywhere from one to three minutes and then get back into the cold.

Huberman Lab

Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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There's simply no way around the fact that if you ingest far more calories than you burn, you're likely to gain weight. And a good portion of that weight is likely to be adipose tissue, fat. It's also true that if you ingest fewer calories than you burn, that you will lose weight and that a significant portion of that will come from body fat.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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So here's a potential kind of sets reps protocol that you can play with. Find a temperature that induces shiver for you. That's going to vary depending on your cold tolerance and how cold adapted you are. One to three, maybe five times a week, get in until you, or get under the shower or whatever it is until you start to shiver, genuinely shiver.

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Essentials: Lose Fat With Science-Based Tools

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Then after about a minute or so, get out, spend one to three minutes out, but don't dry off. Get back in for anywhere from one to three minutes, but try and access the shiver point again. And you might do three repetitions of that. So it's three times in and three times out total. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Chris Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher at Harvard University.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Those are the stereotypes, right? Or suspicious of science, NIH and CDC, or believes in science, NIH and the CDC wholeheartedly. The divide is very stark. And this needs to stop. Like the divide needs to stop. We need to start filling in with answers. And I think there's soon to be a exploration, a scientific exploration of the relationship between vaccines and autism.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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I read this someplace on X, which means... But I think that's the idea. And I think some people were kind of upset that resources were going to be devoted to this because they felt like it was a done deal. And then others are very excited because they feel like, hey, listen, if... If you don't think there's a link, then here's an opportunity to establish that with real rigor.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And I think everyone's just really interested in the studies being done properly. Look, I think more data is always great.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Well, if there's an inflammation link, then yes.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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What about dad? You know, there are these theories about the statistically significant increases in rates of autism for offspring of men who are 50 or older. My read of the data says is that it's still a very small increase. It's not like the kind of increases you're describing here for diabetes.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Which is something like... 25 times greater than the increase due to age of the male. So this is so important because people hear, oh, you know, older sperm equals higher probability of autism. But yes, still a very low probability of autism compared to dad is obese, but in his 20s or 30s.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Such a critical message, but also reassuring in the sense that we can do something about it. We can. Because what you're talking about is metabolic dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction of the parents, right? So, you know, trying to control the behavior of still unborn or yet to be conceived children is pretty tough to do. And

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And yet anyone thinking of conceiving should really pay close attention to their metabolic health is clearly the message. I think obesity becomes a little bit of a, of a, of a critical factor, yet a distractor that wasn't meant to rhyme. For when we hear metabolic health, I think a number of people hearing this will say, well, I'm not overweight, so my mitochondria are probably healthy.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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But what you listed off included high triglycerides, You said blood pressure, which, you know, there are some thin people or, you know, non apparently obese people. I say apparently obese because a lot of people are carrying a higher body fat percentage than they realize, even though they're not, you know, taking up a lot of space. So I think, you know, It's not always, and low HDL.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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So sometimes, you know, we're shocked to see like, oh, this person is like apparently healthy, but has, you know, low HDL and has got their ApoB is through the roof and they're not well. But just because they're not obese doesn't mean they're metabolically healthy, correct?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Right. I mean, what I realize, and this was really where I wanted to bring us to, is a question for you. I have an idea, but let's also pose the question as an idea and feel free to bat it down. I'm beginning to think that in order to get out of this health rut that we're in, that clearly relates to mitochondrial dysfunction, right?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And at the same time, there are tools, the lifestyle tools that you described. Yes, there are supplements and maybe methylene blue will be advantageous and methylate B12 perhaps, but certainly the lifestyle factors. Most people, again, when they hear metabolic health, they just think, okay, metabolism, obesity, thinness or fatness, and it sort of becomes a gravitational pull towards that.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Do you think it's possible to create a metric

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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I don't want to say BMI as an example because that's controversial for some people, but is it possible to create a metric of all-around metabolic health that would be incentivized so that people can live better lives, their offspring can be healthier as well, and we can unburden the healthcare system and potentially avoid millions and millions of people having these so-called incurable mental health disorders, in air quotes?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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It's a new perspective that will change the way that you think about mental and physical health and that no doubt will impact your health practices in very positive ways. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Fantastic. What role do you see yourself in going forward? I mean, clearly public education about these issues related to metabolic and mitochondrial health is a wonderful home for you. In addition to all your clinical work and everything else you're doing this, you're clearly very passionate about it.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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If I may ask, do you have plans to get involved in helping the new NIH, new Health and Human Services folks, you know, steer in the right direction?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Chris Palmer, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me back. I credit you with leading the

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Which makes sense. MAO inhibitors inhibit the enzymes that break down, or let's just speak about these enzymes broadly.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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I think most antidepressant drugs or treatments for ADHD, typical prescription treatments, either reduce the breakdown of neuromodulators like serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, depending on which one we're talking about, or they reduce the reuptake so that there's just more neuromodulator around for longer. Yes. Tell us about mitochondria in the framework of mental health.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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call to arms, the public awareness and the implementation of what some people call metabolic psychiatry, but what we could easily just call the relationship between mental and physical health and the use of nutrition. supplementation and where appropriate prescription drugs for the treatment of mental health.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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But what do you call this field that you've basically founded and that you're pioneering? There are others, right? But that you're pioneering and how should the general public think about the relationship between mitochondria and their mental health for those that are not aware? Educate us.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. What are some of the things that we know? can improve mitochondrial health, either number, function, or otherwise.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And maybe we can talk about the basics first and get a little bit granular, if you could, about what are the prescriptions for keeping your mitochondria healthy or improving your mitochondrial number and improving their function. And then we can transition from there to the more, let's just say, the more advanced ways of doing that. Is there a role for supplementation? Is there a role for drugs?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

2072.909

Is there, you know, these days, well, I hear about urolithin A, because I'm a little bit of an adventurer these days, and I'm turning 50 later this year, I decided to experiment with a peptide that is SR31, which is specifically to improve mitochondrial function. I'm doing this with the full understanding. It may do nothing or it may kill me. I don't know, but we'll find out.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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But someone had to do it. And I'm a one variable at a time kind of guy. So it was important for me to stay with my current regimen and only change that, do blood work, et cetera, because a lot of people, some people out there are more in the mode of trying to do a bunch of things. And I don't think that's as helpful to me. It's also just not, it's not in keeping with my nature.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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He focuses on how metabolic health and mitochondrial health in particular can be leveraged to treat and in some cases cure psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, depression, bipolar and ADHD.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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That's right. I'm monogamous with respect to variables. Right. So what can we do at a basic level to keep and improve our mitochondrial number and function? And if we have to hit on some of the usual suspects, fine. You could tell us how we can do this.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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One of the beautiful things about science is that you isolate variables. You can get very reductionist. We know that there are these things called mitochondria that they move around. I mean, these discoveries are truly incredible that have been made in the last hundred years or so. But...

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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There's been this kind of obsession, I think, in the public discussion around health that, you know, around things that are obviously related to the thing that you're trying to cure. So serotonin and brain health. It's like, oh, OK, it makes sense. You know, the listening to Prozac book came out. We increased serotonin. Some people are feeling better. Maybe it's through neuroplasticity.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Maybe it's direct effects of serotonin. But it makes sense. Serotonin, brain, right? You know, it... But if we zoom out from that and we accept, because it's true, that essentially all cells are dependent on mitochondria for their function, why wouldn't we go to this fundamental layer first in order to try and improve mental and physical health simultaneously?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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It's a very different way of approaching medicine in general. Normally we go, okay, well, the issue is right here. That's where the tumor is. That's where the circuit deficit is. This is where the lesion is or the growth, and we're gonna go there, right? But to avoid the pathologic state in the first place,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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These six pillars are wonderful, by the way, a diet, exercise, sleep, substance, overuse or abuse, stress mitigation, and relationship slash purpose. So we're going to keep returning to this theme of mitochondria as foundational throughout today's discussion because I think people need to frame their health in that context. I really do.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Years ago, my postdoc advisor, the late Ben Barris, he died, unfortunately, of pancreatic cancer, but just an incredible scientist, MD and a scientist who really popularized the study of glia. Prior to that, they were seeing this kind of like backwater science. Everyone thought it was just glue for the brain.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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He used to stop us in the hallways late at night, and we called it getting bend, because you'd want to leave. And he was a night owl, it was awful, and you'd get stuck there. But I'll never forget, he stopped me, he called me Andy, and he said, He did this numerous times, but he said, Andy, why? No one calls me that by the way anymore.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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He said, Andy, why is it that as we get older, we have less energy? And I'm like, I don't know, Ben. He's like, someone needs to, he's like, why don't you work on that? Why are you working on these retinal cells? Like you should work on that. And he said, why is it that our brain is less plastic? Well, I don't know. I think it's the glia, right?

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And there is some evidence that it has something to do with the glia, among other things. But there's a fundamentally interesting question. You look at kids and they're just full of energy. And there's the NAD hypothesis and there's these others, but it always seems to circle back to mitochondria. Yes. Over and over. So I think the answer is very clear.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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We have a ton of mitochondria early in life and over time it gets depleted. Is it that simple? Yeah. I mean, there are other things too.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Today, we discuss how metabolic health, something we hear a lot about nowadays, is really about mitochondrial health and the specific lifestyle and other factors that you can use to improve mitochondrial number and function. We talk about things like exercise, sleep, sunlight, which you've heard about before, but we talk about those from a different perspective.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Really? Well, I guess in some sense that makes sense, although I would have thought it would be the younger population.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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And I should say, by taking a second function test, That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

3642.847

It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Let's talk about diet and nutrition for a moment. In recent years, you've talked a lot about the clinical use of the ketogenic diet. for various mental health disorders and cited some spectacular results. And this has had a huge impact on everybody's thinking about what ketogenic diets originally were for.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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It was developed as a medical treatment for epilepsy, is my understanding. Only later did it become popular as a potential avenue for losing body fat, et cetera. What are some of the ways that people can use diet and nutrition to improve metabolic health generally? But let's be more specific, mitochondrial health, number, turnover, all the good stuff that happens in mitochondria.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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um how can nutrition be used um to improve that and why would it be that the ketogenic diet would improve mitochondrial function or is it that the ketogenic diet bypasses the need for standard cellular metabolism by um pulling on some other cellular metabolism um uh mechanisms i'm just trying to draw the link here between uh ketogenic diet and mitochondria because

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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We've, you've well established that mitochondria are central to this whole picture of mental and physical health.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Is that because of the increased calorie consumption? There's this really nice paper that was published a few years ago showing that people who eat above a certain threshold of processed foods tend to consume on average about 500 calories more than they require per day, which might not seem like much.

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

3882.73

But over time that compounds and they gain a lot of adipose tissue and then the adipose tissue is secreting a lot of things into the bloodstream make the whole situation even worse, both brain and bodily. But aside from the caloric load, I mean, is there any evidence that these food dyes and other things that are included in these foods are detrimental to mitochondrial health?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

3906.174

This is a somewhat controversial thing these days because some of these dyes were banned recently, which I saw as a good thing. But then some of the diehards in the scientific community are like, oh, those dosages are

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

3918.524

represent like six thousand fold what you'd have to eat what most people eat you know the dosages used in mice but but the fda still pulled those dyes and the fda is a pretty conservative body um so i don't know i not every chemical is bad of course um but

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4169.234

Wow. So this would be even just like somebody has like a bag of chips and some – you know, just pour in water type pre-made soup or something like that. Those are ultra processed. This would be somebody orders a sandwich at the deli for lunch, which can be done in a relatively healthy way, depending on what's in that sandwich. And then does soda and bag of chips on the side.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4194.417

Like, I mean, that's a lot of, in my opinion, highly processed food. But people, I think sometimes people don't, Think of it that way? Yes. I was surprised and somewhat delighted to learn that one of the ways that the public health folks got kids to smoke fewer cigarettes, because when I was growing up, smoking was cool. If you smoked cigarette, it was cool. People thought it was cool.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4221.002

It definitely is reinforcing because of the nicotine, the dopamine increases, and it was considered cool. you had your like Marlboro Man image from the preceding decades, but then it was really the 90s kind of, it was the actors and models and stuff that made it cool. Like people smoked and it was supposed to be cool. And one of the ways that,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4242.631

we ended up with people smoking far less was not just to ban it on campuses, because that just makes teens want to do it more, right? In college, you want to do it more, was to have these commercials of these... It was all, to be direct, it was just like these...

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4260.226

rich white guys in a room that was portraying like the boardroom of a tobacco company and they were like cackling and talking about like, ha ha ha, they don't think it causes cancer and this kind of thing. Basically pitting youth against adults so that the youth felt like their money was being taken by the establishment. So is there a world where kids are gonna be like,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4286.474

forgive me, but you know, like F that I'm not eating Doritos, you know, like I'm not going to be manipulated by highly processed foods or I'm going to hold onto my mental health by making healthy choices in terms of food. It's tricky, but it has a lot of the same parallels to cigarette use or alcohol use.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4301.823

But I feel like the only way to really get Americans to change their behavior besides scaring them fundamentally, but even if you do that is to incentivize it. And one of the best incentives historically for public health change has been to pit the make the public feel like they're pitted against the people that are trying to take their money unfairly and make them unhealthy at the same time.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4322.131

You got to activate that kind of rebellious spirit. Uh-uh, not going to do it. Just telling people this is bad for you doesn't work, right? We know that. How do we incentivize people?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4397.206

I saw that clip. It's so disturbing to see someone from the American Heart Association actively lobbying to keep tax dollars directed towards... including sugary soda, not even diet soda, but sugary soda in lunches and food for people who are low income.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4563.284

Well, I feel like the smoking parallel is critical and maybe the trans fat. the history of entire cities banning the use of trans fats, for instance, or the use of styrofoam containers, right? I mean, it's a very different issue. This doesn't directly get to human health, although styrofoam's not good, but it's about waste and environment.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4585.021

But I feel like there has to be a top-down ban, and Americans also don't like bans, right? We don't like things, we like choice, but we don't like the consequences of choice. And then we want people to fix the consequences of those choices with treatments that don't have side effects. And then this is kind of the cycle that I've observed in my lifetime over and over again.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4610.753

I think it's the rebellion piece. It's when people realize they're being manipulated. Once people realize they're being manipulated, I feel like that's when they're willing to intervene and stop otherwise reinforcing activity, reinforced addictive activity, save money and like take a different direction. Like that's inherent to the American spirit.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4637.664

As much as we love freedom, we also, we have this like, no, you're not gonna do this to me kind of spirit. We see it everywhere. This is my belief. But then again, I was kind of a rebellious teen. But if it's in service to health, why not?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4725.098

Yeah, we went into a public health discourse. We're weaving back and forth. That's what we do here. I think it's, I mean, look, it's very timely, right? I don't care if you're the staunchest Democrat or the staunchest Republican or somewhere in between, like these issues affect everybody. And- anyone who just wants to view Maha as a Republican thing, it's fine. I'm not affiliated with Maha.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4747.807

I am in favor of improved public health from whatever angles that can meaningfully be done. So tell us about ketogenic diet and then I'd like to ask about things that we can do to improve mitochondrial function in these other bins. But does ketogenic diet improve mitochondrial function? And if so, how does that work?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

4920.602

Well, I'm just a runway for people to... It was incredible messages to take off. Thank you again for the opportunity to disseminate this word.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

52.729

And we discuss some things that have never been discussed before on this podcast, at least in light of mitochondrial health. Things such as creatine, methylene blue, nicotine, And we talk about the key role of specific B vitamins and iron in brain function.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

5378.661

Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

5567.509

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

595.404

Well, first of all, I and I'm sure the listeners really appreciate your humility regarding... who is responsible for the big surge in the interest in this field. So thanks for crediting your predecessors and the others in the field.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6021.553

I'm gonna get really vocal about this lobbying through the American Heart Association thing because I was just shocked, right? For all the obvious reasons, American Heart Association, you assume that they are all about healthy hearts and we know metabolism and healthy weight and activity and all that is healthy for hearts.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6037.186

And it was so clear that they were on the take from these food companies and that's why they sent, even just the timing and the delivery. Again, I'll post to the link because it's just like,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6046.554

jaw-dropping like i can't believe this is like it's like the old commercials of the people from the cigarette industry saying that the cigarettes don't cause cancer and you they know it does and and we're just this is happening now in real time and um this conversation will certainly assist in drawing attention to this i'll probably do a social media post on it as well but there's this

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6066.187

this thing that happens in medicine and public health where the thing that's so obviously the problem is like, it's not even staring us in the face. It's like slapping us in the face. And we take 20 to 30 years relying largely on messaging through Hollywood, kind of what actors are doing, what athletes are doing. Then people are like, oh yeah, maybe this is a thing.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6087.595

And then think the battleship just like eventually just pivots. But there's been decades of horrible misfortune and loss in mental health and physical health, people thinking that there's something wrong with them or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's asinine. It's crazy.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

610.972

At the same time, I credit you with really popularizing a lot of these terms, being willing to go public facing and share about metabolic psychiatry, for lack of a better way to put it. metabolic psychiatry, and really championing these ideas and being open to being part of a medical and science and public discourse community. So I'd be remiss if I didn't say that.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6107.674

And so I'm excited about Maha, even though I don't have any affiliation to it, because it's the first time in my lifetime that anyone said like, hey, let's actually just talk about and think about how to really get healthy. What do we know right now? And so I'm not a political person, but I think it's really important

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6125.616

that we get focused on what's literally slapping us right in the face with like, this is absurd. Forgive me for editorializing here, but we keep coming back to this. We know what we need to do.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6354.502

Yes, I'm not, I'm certainly not, not any longer. And it's also, I think, important that the highly processed foods and the palatability and the accessibility and the low cost. We're not talking about eliminating pie and pastries. I think sometimes people think, oh, I'll never have a muffin again. I'll never have a chocolate croissant. That's not really what we're talking about.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

637.028

So hopefully you'll take that in.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6376.558

We're not talking about a homemade cake. We're not talking about cupcakes. We're talking about things that are easily purchased at low cost, unpackaged, eaten in transit. What we're doing, I realize, is painting this picture of a little bit of the past, the recent past. But what you do so beautifully is you you're really orienting us where we are now.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6397.489

And the fact that we need more science, but we know an awful lot, and there's so much that we can do. And these six pillars of diet, exercise, sleep, avoiding excessive substance abuse, or use or abuse, excuse me, stress mitigation, relationships and purpose, which center back on mitochondrial health.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6415.239

Could we talk about some of the other things that we can do for mitochondrial health, things we can take? These days, we're hearing a lot about creatine. What are the data on creatine and mitochondrial function or brain function? I'm not familiar with these data. I should be.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

642.712

It's true. And I'm not alone in that sentiment. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs, or forever chemicals, are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

66.576

We also have a very direct discussion about vaccines and whether or not inflammation caused by vaccines can potentially damage mitochondria, which then leads to mental health challenges. And of course, in that context, we discuss the vaccine autism debate.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

663.962

As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health concerns. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place. Our place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6824.585

Now there's a lot of interest in methylene blue ever since a video of Robert Kennedy putting methylene blue in his water on a plane kind of went viral. Methylene blue has been around a very long time. What are your thoughts on it? What does it do? Is it going to help mitochondria? Is it for everybody? I don't take it.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

686.386

I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it's pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and that it doesn't degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

6965.071

100%.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

707.579

The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly and without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and even dishwasher safe. I love it, and I use it constantly.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7093.285

Do you know what the dose range is? I don't, off the top of my head. Yeah, because methylene blue, as I understand, has some MAO activity, can adjust some of the enzymes that in turn adjust levels of serotonin. which is why I haven't taken it. I've just been cautious about, I don't really want to boost my serotonin.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7115.236

There's this recent study out of a lab at Stanford showing that the rewarding properties of various things, as we know, increase dopamine in anticipation of a reward, but also important, it seems, these are mouse studies, but

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7129.045

serotonin drops as dopamine goes up and that drop in serotonin is at least as important as the increase in dopamine for the reinforcing properties of certain behaviors and substances and um i i'm very reluctant to tamper with anything that would raise serotonin because in these studies um or these experiments or in these experiments i should say increasing serotonin

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7159.088

offset some of the rewarding aspects of otherwise rewarding things. So I want things that are rewarding to feel rewarding. And so this difference between dopamine and serotonin seems pretty vital. I mean, that's not to say I'm like terrified of anything that increases serotonin, but to do it pharmacologically just seems a little...

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7178.766

a little sketchy given I don't have a clinical need that I'm at least not that I'm aware of.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7206.165

Really.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

721.691

Our place now has a full line of Titanium Pro cookware that uses this first-of-its-kind titanium nonstick technology. So if you're looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and pans, go to fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code Huberman for 10% off your order. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can experience this fantastic cookware with zero risk.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7276.426

Wow.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7374.246

Interesting. Very interesting, in fact. Before moving on to some more clinical questions, we've been going deep into the science and some public health thoughts and reflections and ideas. There's a supplement called urolithin A that people seem really excited about for improving mitochondrial function. I'm not super familiar with the literature.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7400.526

But coenzyme Q12, urolithin A, we're starting to hear more about these sorts of things sold over the counter. Do you have any thoughts on those?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

744.532

Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7605.959

Things like transcranial magnetic stimulation? Yes. Which is done non-invasively, right?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

764.973

Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, or your nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7718.138

I don't think it's just Americans. I think our species needs to run up against the guardrails at the edge of the cliff and

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7726.161

six times and sadly see a good number of people go over to their demise before we go wait a second we need to think about how fast we're taking these turns we need to pull back i mean there's something weird about our species that we love to develop technology and then uh and then find the destructive aspects of those technologies and pull back and a lot of our you know it's like two steps forward one step back type evolution

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7753.715

It seems inherent to homo sapiens. Forgive me for getting so macroscopic here, but when you look through, there's a wonderful book, The Prince of Medicine, there's a history of medicine, Galen, and like it starts there and all the way forward. And you read like the, what is it? The Emperor of All Maladies about cancer.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7769.9

And you just realize like we're stumbling forward and making miraculous progress. And at the same time, we are, seemingly deliberately overlooking a lot of the stuff that's just obvious. It's like the old advice as we exit this conversation about supplements, the old advice that if you just eat a balanced diet, you're good, doesn't work anymore.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

778.981

Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7794.593

I noticed that because quote unquote balanced diet, first of all, no one can agree on that. and people get caught up in the vegetarian versus carnivore debates, which are really like, or vegan versus carnivore, which are really at the extremes. So we've lost our bearings. We're kind of like, true north is so clear what true north is.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7816.101

mostly non-processed, minimally processed foods, getting adequate quality protein. You could do that vegetarian. You could do that with some animal-based products. If you choose, it's doing that for 90% or 80% of one's nutrition. It's exercise. We know what forms are. Like all the information's there, as you're pointing out.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7832.153

but somehow we're just going to have to keep putting it back in our faces or see enough unfortunate stuff that we go away a second, like this is time for a course correction. But hey, that's what we're trying to do here, right? Absolutely. And we have colleagues to do it as well. And I'll just throw in, as long as we're editorializing a lot today,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7854.377

I think in the last five years, the discourse around public health from the mental health side, from the cardiology side, from the cancer side, from the long-term has really transformed in no small part thanks to social media and podcasts. So things are evolving.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7870.837

Oh, well, and thank you. And thank you. Vitamin deficiencies and mental health. It almost sounds like we're headed deeper into supplements and we might touch on that.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7882.466

But a few years ago, I went to a McKnight meeting and somebody presented some proteomics data where they were sequencing spinal fluid from depressed patients and finding that certain depressed patients had deficiencies in certain vitamins that could easily be replaced through supplementation. And lo and behold, their depressions were in these particular patients were being cured

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7903.681

Literally reversed, going into remission by virtue of taking the appropriate vitamins. But the issue was they had to use spinal taps. So it was not in order to know what these patients needed. But it was really striking. I thought, goodness, we're talking about B vitamins and depression. So could you tell us about B12 and other B vitamins and B12? methylation and folate.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

7926.693

There's a little cluster of topics here that I think is super interesting and that people really should know about vis-a-vis depression and other CNS challenges.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

795.606

I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

80.367

We also discuss public health and what is needed to truly change the way people exercise and eat and the rapidly changing landscape of the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. As you'll soon hear, Dr. Palmer gives us a masterclass on mitochondrial function and how to improve this vital aspect of our health.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

811.055

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. If I think about a mental health condition like depression, let's take depression to start off.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

833.948

I can just broadly create two columns of things or approaches that one might take. One is this mental model of sort of a molecule deficiency. I'm not saying this, but there are many who at one point thought depression is related to a deficiency in serotonin, or depression is related to a deficiency in dopamine, either levels, regulation,

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

860.93

enzymatic control, whatever the level of control, just this idea that these molecules are somehow lacking. If you put them back, you can relieve some symptoms of depression. The other column that comes to mind for me, having looked at the data on cognitive behavioral therapy, on the data on

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

884.833

psychedelics in the clinical setting for the treatment of depression, SSRIs, and other so-called antidepressants is this notion of neuroplasticity, the idea that neural circuits can change and that neural circuits control our sense of well-being, our perception of self, perception of others, feelings of agency, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

8921.42

we're really sorry we can't do better you're just gonna have to suffer for life like we can do better and i applaud your efforts to bring about that change i mean i think people realizing that often not always but often mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of of these things um is critical um speaking of which

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

8945.171

I have to ask, and feel free to pass on this question if you like, but I've become very interested in vaccine biology and the debate about vaccines, about the adjuvants that are used to deliver the vaccines. Obviously, it is a very contentious topic. I just want to know, without being... I'm not trying to be provocative here.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

8966.614

Is there any evidence that vaccines or the adjuvants for vaccines or anything about vaccines and their delivery can disrupt mitochondrial function? You know, so often we think that it's like the vaccine having a specific effect on what the vaccine was designed to target that could potentially cause side effects or something like that. That's what many of the theories hold.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

8988.689

But given the key role of mitochondria in all aspects of brain functioning. And given that some people are convinced, I'm not saying I believe this, but are convinced that vaccines are tied to these mental health challenges or to autism, let's be direct about this. Is there any evidence that vaccines of any kind can disrupt mitochondrial function or support mitochondrial function for that matter?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

901.266

And it's now very clear that if you change levels of neuromodulators like dopamine, like serotonin, you don't necessarily cure depression but you open a window for plasticity, and then perhaps the therapy that you're doing can modify brain circuits more robustly.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

919.954

So I think in terms of molecule deficiency, maybe it's a vitamin deficiency, a neuromodulator deficiency, and then I also think about plasticity, that these treatments are just allowing for more brain change more rapidly. What other columns would you add to that picture? And perhaps first, do you think that picture is woefully inadequate or just partially inadequate?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9211.384

For instance, forgive me, but the one that I'm aware of is that flu in pregnant mothers at the first to second trimester transition is correlated with statistically higher incidence of schizophrenia in the offspring. Do I have that right?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9228.293

Okay.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

943.865

Because I think this is the way most people think about the treatment of mental health. They think, oh, there's something missing. You take a drug and you get that thing back. And then like ADHD, you don't have enough dopamine or you put it in and then all of a sudden the tensional circuits work better. This kind of thing versus plasticity, which is the modification of those circuits.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9497.051

Is that right?

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9557.153

Assuming there's choice, there's a risk-benefit analysis. Do you want the... the potential inflammation from the vaccine or lack of, you run the gamble. It's hard to predict who's going to have a big inflammatory response and who's not.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9571.973

Although I'm thinking in the back of my mind about these lifestyle factors, even though it's a young child or an adolescent in some cases, but young children typically, there are things that you can do to bolster the the health of that kid going into a vaccine if you're choosing to vaccinate your kids, right? Like proper sleep, proper nutrition, proper everything.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9593.677

You wouldn't want them even slightly sleep deprived because that would increase the risk of inflammation, right? I mean, these things compound as I understand it. So You know, I think what most all parents really want is a sense of control over what are inevitably a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors. And this is what I hear when I really listen to this debate about vaccines.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

96.515

If you've heard about metabolic health, you've heard about the obesity crisis, that's important. But looking at all of that and approaching it through the lens of mitochondrial health, you'll soon learn is absolutely the way to go.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9619.345

I hear my science colleagues inevitably saying, okay, the Wakefield data were BS, et cetera. Like, no, no, no, there's no possibility. And then I hear parents who are having kids whose kids are due for vaccines. And they're like- I don't know what to do. They're terrified. And these are smart people, and they don't know what to believe anymore. That's the challenge.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

962.474

And the two things are not mutually exclusive. But I think until now, there really hasn't been a clear understanding that there are other columns for mechanistic change in mental health.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

9930.115

I appreciate the thoroughness of your answer. I can promise you that Anything we put out about that will include the full context.

Huberman Lab

Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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Well, if they do, I'm going to get rabid by posting the preamble because it's very important that people hear the full context. And I really appreciate you embracing that topic with the depth and rigor and

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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sensitivity also that that you do uh because i don't think we can um duck this vaccine question anymore um i never thought in my lifetime that vaccines would be a thing it's like when i was a kid everyone got the polio vaccine the measles vaccine and kind of went about our way i do understand the number of vaccines that kids are getting now like the vaccine schedule has expanded um uh yeah i've been um

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Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

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kind of thrown into the middle of this as different guests have come on this podcast who've said they do get the flu vaccine, others who say they don't. And, you know, gosh, if ever there was a separator besides Democrat versus Republican, it's this vaccine thing. It's really like V separator. It's so closely tied to believes in science, doesn't believe in science.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Charan Ranganath. Dr. Charan Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Davis.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic, but if I recall the quote that Dr. Ranganath passed along, which does not come from him, it descends from somebody else, not to be named, is that, quote, science progresses one funeral at a time. Very, very actually interesting. very interesting statement. It could be examined from a number of directions, but I agree. I agree.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I mean, there's some wonderful, let's call them aged scientists with tremendous knowledge and excitement. I mean, one only has to listen to like the Nobel prize winner, Richard Axel, talk about his love of olfaction and perception, and you can sense his delight and he's getting up there. Sorry, Richard, but it's true. You're in your, he's in his seventies, right?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Hopefully he'll live a very long time, but yeah, And certainly science progressed as a consequence of him being alive and working on the olfactory system. But I think what you're referring to is really important. Neuroplasticity doesn't necessarily shut down as we age. It might even stay open to the same degree as early adulthood.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you believe that it's because people tend to seek out less new knowledge as opposed to lacking the ability to create new knowledge.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Dr. Ranganath has an exquisite ability to describe research studies in clear terms and to combine that with his own narrative and life experience in a way that really frames for you practical tools that you can apply in your daily life. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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No, we've talked about that in this podcast. I think the key statement that you made that people should hold on to as we progress through this is that dopamine is not dumped everywhere. It's not sprinkled all over the brain. It's released in fairly restricted sites in order to drive particular processes. I think that's sufficient for now.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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We can put a link to the paper, of course, in the show note caption. So let me make sure I understand that the, when people are prompted with a question.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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That drives release of dopamine. The amount of dopamine is proportional to how curious they are to get the answer to that particular question. And then the dopamine itself, if elevated because they are very curious, can increase the probability that they will remember the answer. it creates a milieu, an environment for better memory.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But that can confuse us and make us think that dopamine improves our memory, but it's that curiosity increases dopamine, which increases the capacity to store information that comes subsequent to curiosity.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So when people ask me, and they ask me a lot, how best to elevate their brain dopamine, One reasonable answer based on this study is curiosity, to engage curiosity. Do you know the quote by Dorothy Parker? The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. I believe it was Dorothy Parker. If it wasn't, I'm sure we'll find out quickly in the comments on YouTube.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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The dopamine system.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Recently, we had one of the world's experts on romantic relationships on this podcast, Esther Perel, to be specific. And we talked about a lot of things related to romantic relationships. But she said that one of the most sustaining factors for romantic relationships over long periods of time.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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is a sense of curiosity, both about the other person, but also about oneself and how one changes in the context of the relationship, and also curiosity about where the relationship could eventually go, where one to continue to invest in it. So this word of curiosity seems to be a resounding theme.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I'm struck by, although it makes total sense, that curiosity would drive dopamine release in these pathways, that novelty would drive dopamine release in these pathways. And that also in the physical realm, dopamine is so important for physical movement. I don't think this is a coincidence, right?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Somehow evolution organized this neuromodulator dopamine to be involved, the way I think about it, is in both a physical movement, it's required for it in fact, as well as cognitive movement. What we're really talking about is cognitive forward movement, if there is such a thing. Is there a... We're both neuroscientists, but you're the memory researcher.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Is there sort of a word or a framework for thinking about cognitive movement forward, meaning as opposed to just recycling past ideas and memories, the notion of taking memories and actually putting them, as you said earlier, into the present to anticipate the future, actually forward mental movement?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Well, to be clear, you observed heightened activity in a dopaminergic circuit. So the idea that it would not involve dopamine is... is a bit of a stretch, but you didn't directly show that it was dopamine, so you're being very exact.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. Again, I focus on getting most of my food from whole food sources throughout the day.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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No, no, trust me, this audience likes nerdy. I think that's part of why they're listening. Locus coeruleus is just an area of the brain that tends to sprinkler large brain areas with epinephrine, or norepinephrine, noradrenaline, So somewhat distinct from the dopamine system, but you're telling us it can also release dopamine.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But I typically eat a David Barr in the late afternoon when I get hungry between lunch and dinner, sometimes also mid morning if I get hungry then. And sometimes I'll use it as a meal replacement, although not a complete meal replacement, it can get me to the next meal. So if I need to eat in a couple of hours, but I'm really hungry, I'll eat a David Barr.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. One thing that we talked about just briefly earlier was this non-sleep deep rest protocol that in yoga tradition is called yoga nidra or yoga sleep because you lie down, it's self-directed relaxation, long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate, et cetera, et cetera.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I called it NSDR not to appropriate it, but because the language of yoga nidra is a little bit of a separator for people. It sounds a little bit esoteric, right? And non-sleep deep rest tells you what it is, right? Um, there's a study, uh, the university of Copenhagen.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I can try to link to it in the show note captions, and I'd love your thoughts on it that show that people who do this practice, this is a pet, um, imaging study. So positron emission tomography for those that don't know, and they see significant increases in striatal dopamine in the condition of people that do this self-directed relaxation, as opposed to a more traditional meditation.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And this is why I say that NSDR is useful for restoring mental and physical vigor. Which translates to this idea that dopamine prepares us for or is a reservoir for potential movement, typically toward rewards. And I love that we're talking about some of the other facets of dopamine because all too often people think about it as pleasure or motivation. And certainly it's involved in motivation.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And I'm very happy. to learn that it's also involved in learning. That's a novel perspective on dopamine. And we hear so much about dopamine. Do you think that when dopamine is released as a consequence of curiosity in a way that primes the memory system, that we become entrenched in particular behaviors or um, routes of, uh, pursuing curiosity, um, to the exclusion of others.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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What I'm thinking about here as a kid, um, we've seen these data, um, kids with ADHD, um, actually have terrific ability to focus if it's something that they're really excited about, really curious about.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So you give a kid with ADHD who loves video games, a video game, and they're like a laser. So it's not that they lack the capacity to focus, it's that they have a harder time dropping into focus. But it seems that because of the learning dimension to dopamine, that these circuits could potentially, quote unquote, learn that it's video games that provides that feeling of focus

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great. It's more like a cookie consistency. kind of a chewy cookie consistency, which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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to the exclusion of other things, meaning how does one keep a diversification of inputs to the dopamine system, so that we're continually driving dopamine through lots of different things, as opposed to just social media, or just video games, or just pick your favorite? Yeah, thing.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Because becoming a functional human being involves the requirement to focus on many things, not just the things we were curious about.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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it's such an important theme. I feel like nowadays, in part because of the algorithms on social media where we are fed things that feed our progressively greater and greater scrolling and dwell time, as it's called, you know, the algorithms are measuring clearly how long we dwell on a given image and what's in that image and etc. But it'd be nice to cultivate an algorithm for curiosity.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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He is one of the world's leading researchers in the topic of human memory. And memory, of course, is an essential component to our entire lives. Memory isn't just important for remembering things that we learn.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Surely it can be done. I mean, you got all these smart computer scientists and AI folks. And we come into this world naturally curious. All primates, including humans, will visually fixate on anything that's novel, right? And study it. And try and make predictions and gain understanding.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Um, maybe now would be a good time for us to discuss a little bit about the circuitry involved in memory so that we have that as a template to, to, uh, to, um, digest some other themes in memory. Um, most people are probably familiar with the so-called hippocampus, um, which is, uh, means seahorse.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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It looks a little bit like a seahorse, although the anatomist had a little bit of an imagination there in my opinion. But, um, Hippocampus, let's add to it prefrontal cortex, which you've already mentioned, and then these neuromodulatory systems. So if we were going to assign a one sentence definition, functional definition to each of those areas, what would you say the hippocampus does?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Please, and let's add those in. But I think if we can start with three, I think then folks can digest it.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Yeah, yeah. But...

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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He used to call me Andy. That's fine. Yeah. Long story. That's a Davis thing.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And one of the most important factors in both your short and long term health and your energy levels each day is your body's ability to manage blood glucose to maintain energy and focus throughout the day. You want to keep your blood glucose levels steady without big spikes or crashes.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods impacted my blood glucose levels. And it's proven incredibly informative for determining what food choices I make, when best to time my food intake around things like workouts,

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Is it that they get a, a error signal or a correct signal if they're doing it in the right direction over time, they just kind of, the brain figures it out.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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No, that's okay. I mean, if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, I forget the Wisconsin card sorting task details, but you know, like they, they're told to just start sorting the cards and that the, the correct algorithm will reveal itself by a series of error and correct signals.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And so maybe I'm taking all the red cards and putting them in one pile, black cards and putting them in another, and getting error signals. So then maybe I go odds evens. Maybe I divide by suit, depending on what kind of cards they are. Maybe I organize by even-odd alteration. And sooner or later, the brain figures it out.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So there's context-dependent action and learning without the prefrontal cortex.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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both cardiovascular training versus resistance training and when and what to eat close to sleep or not so close to sleep when I wake up in the morning, if I'm fasting or breaking a fast, et cetera. Indeed, using levels has helped me shape my entire schedule. So I have more energy, more cognitive focus. My workouts are better. My sleep is better.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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They perseverate.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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That's so interesting. Maybe you could say that another time. You said it very clearly. I got it. But say it one more time because if anyone missed it, this is super important. Older people can –

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Everything got better when I understood how different things, especially food, were impacting my blood glucose levels. So if you're interested in learning more about levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to levels dot link slash Huberman. Right now, Levels is also offering an additional two free months of membership.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Gosh, it speaks to almost two parallel processing streams for memory, if I'm not mistaken – Or maybe – so what's going on there? Is it that one form of memory involves the suppression of information and that circuit is actually quite active in these older people and young people?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Whereas curiosity for – and the ability to remember and integrate new information is somehow diminished in older people. Earlier we were talking about how that's not the case, that curiosity – if curiosity is intact, memory is intact and growing. Yeah.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I would guess no, but this is why I asked about movement earlier. Curiosity is also linked to your ability to access novel scenarios. Of course, online you can just thumbscroll or click and access all sorts of novelty. There must be data as to whether or not people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s are scrolling social media to the same extent that younger people are.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Okay. So scrolling is bad for memory.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Again, that's levels.link, L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try their new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I'll just bring it up. White matter are the fiber tracks, the wires, essentially, that connect neurons across long and short distances.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life. And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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There are some CEOs that are doing spectacular things.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Really? Yes. So depression is dangerous for memory.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Do you think that depression is dangerous for memory and a risk factor for Alzheimer's because it is, by definition, anti-curiosity?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Depression means poor sleep, which means poor learning, which means that's a big part of it.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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It's also vitally important for setting the context of our entire life, meaning only by understanding where we come from, who we were, and who we are currently, can we frame what we want to do in the next moments, the next day, the next years, and indeed for the rest of our life.

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In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. You probably think a fair amount about age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's. And I'm just curious.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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um, at a personal level, uh, what are the sorts of things that you do to try and offset cognitive decline? Uh, you seem to be a very vivacious and curious person. Um, I've known you a long time and I don't know whether or not you were caffeinated every time we met, but you have a lot of energy. You're a very curious person. Um, you just wrote a book.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Um, we'll talk more about, and you're going on podcasts. You're doing a lot of things besides running a, you know, world-class research laboratory. So clearly a lot of curiosity. Um, What do the data say about ways to maintain or enhance one's memory capacity?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations. So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired of those meditations.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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With the understanding that curiosity is probably involved as we talked about earlier, but at a really basic level, I mean, a number of things leap to mind, but I'm just curious what your, if you had to pick like three to five things that are clearly substantiated in the data as supporting the maintenance or enhancement of memory as we get older, what are those?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Wow, so these are people exercising, paying attention to their sleep, social engagement. What are some of the other, I'm guessing, low inflammatory diet?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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The smoking one is interesting because we know smoking can cause cancer. Mm-hmm. And cardiovascular risk is, is real there. Although there are some data, as I understand that nicotine itself, not smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing, but that nicotine can be pro cognition and maybe even pro memory. Um, and nowadays people are using nicotine more and more.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30 day trial.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I'm not a big proponent of this because of the blood pressure increase and the typical routes of administration are dangerous, but, um, Nicotine, I've been told, is protective for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Is that true?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Which I define as people wonder what is that? And there are all these online debates about vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, blah, blah, blah. But I think most people in the world are omnivores, most. And I think it's very clear that the number one thing for healthy diet is to try and get most of one's food from non-processed or minimally processed sources.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

3857.332

That sort of sets you in the right direction.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

3865.074

Yeah, they do great work.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

3873.556

Olive oil, fruits, vegetables, fish, eggs, limited amounts of meat, although I'm half Argentine. Yeah, you like your steaks. I do.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

400.138

Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30 day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Charan Ranganath. Dr. Charan Ranganath. Welcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4023.857

That's my understanding. Yeah. Although the times I've said that on the Internet, I caught a lot of pushback from some of the cannabis researchers. But then having invited one of them on this podcast, I then got subsequent input from other researchers which counter their narrative, which we can both say because we're both research scientists. That's what you call a field.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4048.24

No, no, no. You didn't. You didn't. I think the point is just that it's very clear that there are certain individuals for whom high THC consumption can trigger psychotic episodes. Yeah, and we're seeing this with – But not everyone. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4081.093

What was the first example?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4086.636

Oh, psychedelic. OK, we'll talk more about that. Charne is himself a rock and roll musician and loves rock and roll, hence the reference to Rick Rubin earlier. And there's a photo of Rick here in the studio that our photographer, Mike Blayback, took. So we were looking at that together. So yes, psychedelics have claimed the minds of certain people, made them

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4107.161

helped contribute to their pre-existing, presumably, psychosis. I should also say, in fairness to the other compounds out there, methamphetamines have also significantly contributed to the progression of psychosis in many people. So it's not just psychedelics. And then, of course, there are those who have somehow managed to take psychedelics and become more sane.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

412.667

Speaking of memory, we go way back.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4129.815

Or at least remain as sane as they were before.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4148.482

That makes sense, given the neurodegenerative dopaminergic... involvement in schizophrenia and those drugs are pro-noradrenergic dopaminergic in general.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

415.968

I was a graduate student when you were first hired as an assistant professor, which for those that aren't familiar with the academic nomenclature and trajectories, assistant professors are professors that have not yet received tenure. But now, of course, you're a full professor and you are a world expert in memory, something that I think occupies the minds of all of us. even if we're not trying.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4176.27

So eat healthy. We talked about exercise. Yeah, yeah. And my understanding – I've been looking at this in detail lately, but I'd love your thoughts – is that while everybody – we now believe men, women, et cetera, should do both cardiovascular exercise, so to speak –

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4191.525

elevate heart rate for 12 to 60 minutes kind of thing, depending on the intensity, as well as resistance training to maintain neuromuscular function, offset sarcopenia, et cetera. To me, the really impressive effects of exercise on learning capacity and the brain in terms of brain health seem to come from cardiovascular exercise.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4211.015

And that could just be because that's what's been emphasized in the studies. But even when one looks at some and compares the best human studies, it really does seem like getting blood flow up to the brain, getting a nice, release of neuromodulators into the brain facilitates learning. And then, of course, people have to do something with that learning, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4231.008

So do you make an effort to exercise for the specific purpose of maintaining or enhancing brain function?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4248.099

I'm sure people will be curious. What does it take to finish a book and how much? You mean you took a toll on your body?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4282.911

I'm just sorry to hear it.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4394.539

Good for you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4412.326

Beautiful dogs.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

443.107

So that's actually the segue to my first question, which is, as we move through our day, how much of our cognition, our perception is focused on things that are happening in the present as opposed to being driven by prior memories. You know, studies ever been done that evaluate how often our brain, you know, switches to thoughts about the past.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4430.686

Yeah, they use these for military operations in the Tier 1 military. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're trained to jump out of planes with parachutes.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4458.645

You're like, but this one's the ninja.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4469.388

They're like feral people, feral dogs. Yeah. But they have big hearts because they're eternally grateful. You gave them a home.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4491.656

No, I see where you're going with this.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4573.413

You're in great shape. You're a few years older than I am and I haven't seen you in a while. And I always have this like slight fear when I run into a colleague again after a while, because there was this joke that we didn't tell professors until we became professors about the so-called tenured look.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4588.507

You see someone come in as a postdoc, you see them as a junior professor, and then you see them after tenure. And tenure is a big milestone, right? It corresponds to academic freedom, et cetera. It's a wonderful milestone. It's a wonderful thing that we both have this.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4600.512

But you see some people who got tenure and you just go, oh, goodness, they look like they're, you know, age 25 years in five years. We also see this with former presidents, not all of them, but a lot of them. And so to run into you, well, I saw you on Lex Friedman's podcast, but then to see you, I'm like, Charm's taking great care of himself. It makes me happy. It's not a judgment.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4620.503

It makes me happy because I love my colleagues and I want to see them live a very long time because I don't subscribe to the idea that science progresses fast. one funeral time of my favorite scientists.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4636.817

No, I'm saying that there's certain scientists- I love my fellow scientists. I do too.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4642.278

There are certain scientists that you'd love to see live forever, and you're one of them. So you said walk in the dog, which presumably gets you some sunlight, a lot of sunlight in Davis, even in the winter. Yeah, yeah. Cloud cover is bright up there. It gets you on a regular sleep rhythm. But you said this sense of purpose, right? And I'm curious about how you now frame exercise.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4663.563

You said you don't like working out. You made an investment in your health by paying a trainer. So now you train regularly. And that's also an investment in your brain health. And if we were to go back to this notion of sense of purpose, are you talking about a larger sense of purpose? Like, okay, I want to contribute to understanding of how the brain works. You're a brain explorer after all.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

468.977

Of course, we learn about things that are in our present. I know this as a cup because I was taught that at some point, but what I'm referring to is how much of our thinking on a day-to-day basis is literally in the past.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4686.522

And therefore, the exercise and the money you put towards a trainer is linked to the ability to do that. Are you linking these nodes or are these kind of separate entities? Like, yeah, I want to be healthier and here's a way to be healthier and ergo. I'll be around longer to study the brain.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4739.958

It speaks to your mentoring as well.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4852.951

I'm not in my world. You want to learn something, you learn something from somebody who's skilled in how to improve somebody at something.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4906.965

You're a real scientist.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

4910.651

Any scientist that likes administrative stuff, I think I'm willing to call out as... What are they doing in science? Because that's like you're supposed to be focusing on experiments. So bravo. So values, then motivation.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5028.227

We'll talk about those three things.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5181.201

Let's, let's, um, uh, hover on that attention versus intention. We hear these words all the time. Um, attention is the directing of one's perception to particular sensations or things in one environment is the way loosely defined, um, accurate, but not exhaustive. Um,

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5198.88

Intention is understanding why we're having a cognitive sense, maybe a cognitive emotional sense of why I am directing my perception to particular things. Is that right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

52.495

This is why, for instance, that people who have deficits in memory, either due to brain damage or due to age related cognitive decline or diseases like Alzheimer's dementia, suffer so much, not just in terms of not being able to remember things for sake of daily tasks, but also for sake of placing themselves in the larger context of their life.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

520.998

Chances are.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5235.441

You're not allowed. Who are these people giving you this feedback? Send me their names and numbers. I have words for them. And listen, I would say, given you run a world-class laboratory, you're successful in your family life, you're successfully raising your second dog, you've written a spectacular book, you're going on podcasts, you're educating the public, I would say you're doing great.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5256.074

So keep going. And whoever these people are, We'll have words with that. You know.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5268.063

I don't want to take us off track, but you know, I spend a lot of time each morning. I first do a non-sleep deep rest or some sort of meditation. Rick Rubin taught me this to get into intention. And there are other people who've come into my life recently. This notion of intention, the reason I said, let's hover on it is so important because we are in a world where things will grab our attention.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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especially on social media. It's basically a war for attention. I don't think it's an attention economy anymore, or Simon's brilliant, I'm not trying to take anything away from that, but it's a war for attention. And one of the ways that you rob your competitors is by taking their attention.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5303.701

I used to joke when I was in a very competitive area as a postdoc, I was competing against a big lab at Harvard and this and that, trying to find genetic markers for retinal neurons, et cetera. And I said, if I could just get them excited about The Wire, remember that show, The Wire? Because it'll suck like 15 hours of those postdocs time. So I thought, you know, it'd be really diabolical.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5322.796

I didn't do it. But, you know, telling people like, you have to see the wire, they, you know, this and that, you know, because you get someone on a really good Netflix program. And if they're a competitor, you just got a competitive advantage. But this is being done all day long, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5335.025

In any case, attention is our ability to, for our perception to be drawn to whatever is most, moving most, loudest, most salient. Intention is different.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5361.362

Hence the values list.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5423.649

When was that? Mine was 2010.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5432.216

Yeah. We'll have to look up.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5698.439

Well, I'm from the Bay Area and spent a lot of time with those folks, men and women in tech. I think that the best ones, like the truly exceptional ones, are very good at dropping into a trench of attention. They're very disciplined with their phone use. And the ones that are doing a lot of task switching often don't have complete lives. They really don't.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5720.034

They're not taking care of their health also. And they are sort of under the sense that like they're working all the time when they're not. As a graduate student, I didn't have a smartphone. I did something recently. I tweeted about this. You may have commented about it. I don't know. But This has helped me a lot. I took an old phone and I put social media on the old phone and only social media.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5740.68

So it doesn't operate as a phone. I can airdrop things to it. So I use that for looking at social media and for posting. That phone is in a box. And then my... is for texting and other forms of communication. So I still have that distraction around me, but social media is now a dedicated thing that I spend a specific amount of time and I have a timer on that phone.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5764.277

So I allocate myself a certain amount of time each day. So for every moment I start that timer, once it hits zero, that's it. And I'm starting to shorten that amount of time. The impact on productivity in terms of writing, in terms of researching, in terms of just dropping into conversation, has been enormous with that simple switch.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5784.666

And I just find it easier to just segregate social media from the phone. Part of the problem is that the phone is, it's like in a walking office. It's not even, it's a phone, it's a computer, it's just too much access.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5872.312

Really? Yeah. What about looking at pictures of – I think it was Larry Squire when I was down at San Diego that said that hanging a few pictures in your office of things that are really pleasant memories can really enhance your work environment because you look at them and go, oh, I remember that. Because of all the context it brings about.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5890.637

But you're saying that the act of taking pictures depletes our memory for that experience.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

5956.504

No, it is real.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6075.82

So is it, so it sounds like if we have, we go on and, uh, on a vacation or to a show or something that taking a photo, as long as it's intentional of something specific that will look, the key is to look at it later, not just post it, but to look at it later and to spend a few moments or more drawing to mind some of the emotional and cognitive experiences around that memory that,

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6101.519

however, changes the memory, right? Anytime we create a story, we're changing the memory. But perhaps, provided it was a good experience, that's better than to not access the photo at all. But I'm struck by, as you are, the number of people who are taking photos at a concert.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6119.654

A friend of mine who's a very successful photographer who shoots a lot of photos of musicians thinks this is the craziest thing, as if any one of those photos is going to be meaningful, right? That they're outside of the experience of the concert, which is exactly what you're describing. Maybe you just have a memory of taking a lot of photos.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6257.871

Not a hippie. You sound like a punk rocker. It's not confused with two. That's good. Yeah, exactly.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6265.556

No, no. I have a question that I'm hoping binds some of this together related to taking photos and memories. I keep many photos. I like printed photos. I have these in a drawer. They mean very much to me. Some of them are in the studio, but I keep most of them in a drawer at home. Polaroids are an interesting example, I think, of what you're describing.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6290.461

The act of taking a Polaroid is more than just clicking or pressing with your thumb on a camera. There's a waiting process. You actually get to see the photo emerge over time. I would bet, even though I haven't run the study, I would bet that people keep Polaroids more than they, and look at Polaroids more than they keep other photos.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6312.5

Which if you think about it is, if it's true, if it's true, is counter logic because, you know, usually people want to do another photo because they don't like the way they looked in the previous photo. With Polaroids, you can't do too many of those, right? It's kind of one and done, maybe two and done.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6329.36

But I feel like the act of taking the Polaroid, waiting for the photo to emerge, kind of stamps it in your memory of the experience itself. And the act of taking the photo is more involved. It's more of a process than just a click, that then you see the photo later. Now, of course, with digital photography, you see it, but you can take 100, you can take 200 photos like that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6346.494

If we were to export this theme of limiting our task switching as a way to enhance our memory, setting up our environment in a way where we put our phone away perhaps, and we also are focused on intention, why we are in something. Do you think that there's something positively reinforcing about getting into a trench, as I call it?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6372.329

Because I find that conversations like this, one of the reasons I do this podcast, the solo episodes and these interviews, is that they provide something that my life prior to it did not provide, which was depth. I mean, we're just here. There's no phones here. And if there are, they're off, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6390.823

And I feel like anytime we go into these trenches, could be a video game, could be an interaction with a loved one, of various kinds, but when we go into these tunnels of attention, there's something that's so deeply satisfying about it, especially to those who have attention deficit issues, that it feels like something real happened, and the rest is just noise.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6413.829

Is there any relationship of the focus system release of dopamine. I know release of dopamine can drive focus, but is the reverse also true?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6429

Correct. That's the question.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6479.843

You're catastrophizing.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6484.025

But if you survive – You averted the catastrophe. The question is, does the potential catastrophe live within you or does it die within you? You only need to live within you sufficiently enough that you avoid the threat in the future, right? But that's the double-edged sword of noradrenergic systems is that they capture lots of memory and they open up thoughts about what could have gone wrong.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6506.035

But if it didn't go wrong, it didn't go wrong. You're alive. You only need to remember to avoid whatever puts you in that circumstance.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

655.399

Yesterday, I took a brief nap in the afternoon. I do this practice of non-sleep deep rest in the afternoon.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6576.332

I'll check it out. Earlier you mentioned, and I want to make sure that we return to this notion of taking care of one's vision and one's hearing as a way to offset memory loss. Very important concepts. Could you share with us what's known about that?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6607.962

So don't listen to your headphones too loud, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

662.869

It's very restorative for mental and physical energy, I find. But I fell asleep toward the end of it. And when I woke up, I was in a dark room, but I didn't know where I was for about, it felt like 10, 15 seconds, somewhat scary, but I'd forgotten that I was in my solo studio. I had turned the room lights down.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6621.894

Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the top music. I'm friends with some some really amazing musicians. They all wear insert earplugs.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6635.228

Oh, I just mean protect your hearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6698.88

I did an episode on oral health and the effects on, as you said, on brain health are amazing because streptococcus mutans, which is the bacteria that causes cavities, can funnel its way into the bloodstream and potentially cross the blood-brain barrier, which is, I think, why people think it might be detrimental to brain health.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6777.59

Is that the explanation for the brain fog that people report?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

689.303

What is it when we have these lapses in memory as we emerge from sleep, or sometimes if one has been severely jet lagged, you can experience this disorientation of place. Do we know what that is?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

6992.877

This probably explains, at least in my mind, why these lifestyle factors like improved sleep, cardiovascular and resistance training exercise, but certainly cardiovascular exercise, eating a lot of leafy foods, et cetera. We know all of those things offset inflammation to some degree or another. Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7015.427

I mean, one of the best ways to inflame your brain and body is to not get enough sleep and eat, you know, a lot of highly processed foods, for instance. To date, are there any even semi satisfactory prescription drugs or other compounds that can slow the progression of Alzheimer's dementia once it's started?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

71.181

Recognizing family members isn't just about being able to relate to those family members on a day to day basis. It's also about understanding the full context of all one's memories with those people and what meaning a given interaction brings to any of life's experiences. So today you're going to learn how memory works. You're going to learn about things like deja vu.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7147.227

I think people really need to hear and internalize that because I think everyone is waiting for this miracle drug that is unlikely to ever arrive frankly. I mean, today we have some okay treatments for Parkinson's to try and offset the loss of dopaminergic neurons, but they can even transplant essentially dopaminergic neurons into the substantia nigra. But

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7169.454

None of those things, L-DOPA, et cetera, have proved to be cures for Parkinson's. Not getting hit in the head is helpful. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7180.383

So there are a lot of don'ts. I'm grateful that today you're sharing a number of do's, both in the context of offsetting age-related cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, but also in terms of how to enhance focus and enhance memory. I want to make sure that we touch on a few topics related to memory that

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7196.144

a little bit off the trajectory we're on now, but that come up a lot when people start thinking about memory. And one that's kind of intriguing, very intriguing, is déjà vu. Do we have any understanding about what déjà vu is? Is it just like a recollection of something similar that spontaneously gets triggered? I'm like, what is déjà vu?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

720.353

Sea lions?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

721.714

Okay, we'll get back to that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7287.689

HM is a now dead famous patient and literally chapter in the history of neuroscience, somebody who had his hippocampi bilaterally, one on each side of the brain, removed to treat epilepsy. It fixed the epilepsy, but he had lost all capacity to remember prior events.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7451.713

I don't know what that is.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7458.995

Less than a second.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7610.405

So for those looking for novelty in different domains of life, maybe this is the solution.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

770.807

So basically... Not much epinephrine, not much adrenaline.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7740.487

I'd like to talk about the relationship between memory and mental health for the following reason. I'm very struck by the fact that in experiments such as the work that Karl Deisseroth, who was actually the first guest on this podcast, brilliant neuroengineer, of course, and psychiatrist, described in which he's talking to a patient who's depressed

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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This patient has a stimulator for the vagus nerve that can crank up stimulation of the vagus nerve. And essentially the narrative goes from this patient, I believe it was a woman in this case, talking about being suicidally depressed. She can't anticipate doing anything of any interest or excitement to her, increasing vagal stimulation, which by the way, folks, does not just calm people down.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Vagal stimulation actually creates a lot of alertness. So this is a vast misconception out there that vagal stimulation is all about calming. In any case, as the vagal stimulation goes up, her narrative literally changes in real time to, yeah, I could see myself going out and applying for a job. I'm kind of excited about the future, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So complete transformation of one's outlook, but also in some instances, memory of prior events. So how we cast prior events is so interesting. And the bridge I'd like to build right now conceptually is that There are two papers that intrigue me.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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One is a paper from Lamberto Maffei's lab in Pisa, which had a paradigm for exploring learned helplessness in rodents, which is a sort of a model for depression, how long a rodent is willing to swim in water to save its life, right, before it gives up. And there's a learned helplessness that eventually arrives. These, yes or not, kind experiments. But at some point they give up and then

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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they've essentially learned they're helpless. And of course they save the animal before it dies. But these animals given essentially an SSRI like Prozac can, restore some sense of hope, meaning they'll swim longer after having learned to be helpless. Is it recovery of depression? We don't know.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But in humans, you see some of the same thing when SSRIs have been effective and they're not always effective. You also see this in some of the psilocybin trials where people have done the psilocybin therapies.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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In the correct context. And now all of a sudden people have this completely different emotional version of the same events. Like, yep, a bunch of terrible things happened. or with the MDMA trials for PTSD.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Controversial right now, FDA didn't approve it, but a good number of patients described saying, yeah, this really terrible set of things that happened, those happened, but I accept it and I'm taking the lessons and I'm moving on and then there's maybe even forgiveness, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, this is a shift in memory brought about by a dramatic shift in neuromodulators.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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SSRIs, of course, increase serotonin. Psilocybin increases serotonin. And it's interesting to me that MDMA, while it increases dopamine, most dramatically increases serotonin. 7X or more in terms of the—now, I'm not suggesting anyone do these drugs at all.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

792.519

Who's the president?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7933.91

With too much of— Too much MDMA. Although the studies on this is interesting because the study that claimed that MDMA did that actually was retracted. Oh, is that right? It turns out they had inadvertently used methamphetamine. Keep in mind, folks, that MDMA is methylene, dioxin, methamphetamine. So I'm not suggesting anyone do these drugs. I'm using this as a conceptual term.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7955.825

Right, right, right. I mean, so in clinical trials, it's clearly been shown, both for SSRIs as well as for psilocybin, these are still emerging clinical trials, and MDMA, that in a significant percentage of individuals, especially when combined with therapy, people can now feel differently about the same memory.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

797.742

Well, it depends on what time of year relative to the election you ask, right? Very interesting. I'm curious also why it is that most all of us have a stable representation of who we are. So, my understanding is that even people with very severe memory deficits don't wake up in the morning and wonder, you know, who am I or who is this person in this body?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So feeling different about the same memory and feeling different about therefore the sense of possibility going forward. This to me is incredible. And it speaks to the fact that much of depression the lack of positive anticipation about the future, et cetera, is based on memories about failures of past or harms of past.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

7997.592

Right. So what is the relationship between the serotonin system and memory? Or what is the relationship more broadly of these neuromodulatory systems or the vagal system that can create these incredible reversals of what we previously thought of as terrible as manageable? And therefore, we're willing to lean into life again. What is that?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

821.11

That somehow we remember that we have a self, that we are separate from other selves, that that kind of knowledge might be innate, we might be born with it, and that the representation of self in memory is very stable. Is that true?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8383.075

You change. You change. Yeah. You change. If, if the integration is guided properly. One thing that I do want to make sure I highlight, and it's not just for, you know, public safety reasons, although that as well, is that people are so intrigued by the idea of quote unquote, opening plasticity. Plasticity is just an opportunity for learning new contingencies, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8405.311

Just taking psychedelics is an experience, but certainly, but it's, The learning of new contingencies occurs in the integration phase as well as within the session. That's why the clinical trials that showed some efficacy for some people were guided intensely by therapists. The mere act of having plasticity, plasticity is an opportunity for learning. It's not the actual learning.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8508.047

Or you have a sense of agency in there. Yeah. Some of the psychedelics, I've never tried this one, but There are interesting studies of ibogaine, iboga, where the universal experience, as I understand, is that it's 22 hours long. It's actually a cardiovascular risk. There's some things that need to be offset there. So don't run out and do this, folks.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But people, I'm told, get a high-definition movie of specific events in their life that actually happened only when they close their eyes. So no hallucinating with eyes open. Interesting. And then they have agency within those movies. And once they... exact the change they wanted to have. It rotates like a cube, very interesting perhaps to a memory researcher why this would be.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And then they get another event of past where they have agency in that event. Incredible.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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A number of papers are being retracted now.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8752.312

I've made foolish errors in outdoor adventures in my past where afterwards I thought that was a really dumb move to even go to that place. to dive, let alone what we did when we did there. Like, you know, I mean, some of the stupid stuff that we did, even NS Kids, like bridge jumps and without testing water depth. I mean, stupid, stupid stuff. Yeah. That I don't recommend anyone repeat.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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But you're right. The surviving stories are, you carry those forward.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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The problem is the other stories we can talk about, people who are paralyzed, dead, et cetera, those stories exist too.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Well, and I think this is where people have to be very careful not to cowboy post-traumatic stress disorder treatment in a way that allows the narrative to make it worse.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Because people, a previous guest on this podcast has this notion of, in describing this, of story fondling, where people can go further and further into the description of how terrible something is reinforced by others, and then the memory changes to become much worse. than either the real events were, or just simply worse within their body and mind. And then they have to live that forward.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So it can go both ways, which is really points to the key, which is to do this with really trained professionals.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8934.602

So recollection is really a double-edged blade.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

8970.064

It's been referred to as the pain of an old wound.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I didn't say that. Someone else.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Incredible. I want to make sure that we talk about something important. at first glance, very different than all of this, but it lands squarely in the conversation we've had until now, which is your love for and your participation in rock and roll. You have a band, right? Pavlov's Dogs.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Okay, what are the other ones called?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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It's like – Is it original music or covers?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Covers.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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um she's still touring yeah she's amazing a friend of mine went on tour with her yeah there's a band called surfboard surfboard was on tour with so i know them yeah oh that's a friend from surfboard no yeah the great band um and she toured with blondie blondie's amazing she's still super vivacious yeah surfboard and and um uh and danny um what instrument do you play

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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You're going to learn ways to offset age related cognitive decline, what the research really says about that and ways to prevent things like Alzheimer's dementia. We also talk about ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And Dr. Ranganath shares his own experience with ADHD, how it relates to memory and the tools that he has used in order to combat his own ADHD.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Lead vocals?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

9125.308

Can people find links to any Pavlov Dog live shows or recordings online?

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Okay. And you have a show coming up. We'll put a link to that because people will listen to this long after that, presumably. That's coming up in Chicago on October 15th.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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We'll put a link to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. But for those that can't make it, because most of us aren't in Chicago, including me, unfortunately, we'll keep an eye out for Pavlov's dogs. I love that you play music. And I just have, for sake of time, one question about your love for rock and roll and playing music. When you're playing rock and roll live, are you thinking about anything else?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I love that. When I do live shows, I like to have the. I'm house lights relatively dim. I don't want to see anybody at first. And then as they get more comfortable, I'm happy to have the house lights come on. Cause I don't play anything. I do live events where I talk about science, where I tell stories about science and scientists. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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A couple of things are right in the front of my mind and I'd be remiss if I didn't say them right now. First of all, it's absolutely clear that we need to get you back here for more discussion about memory and learning. There's just so much that we didn't have the opportunity to cover in this conversation, but we most certainly will in a future conversation.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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They become more optimistic. And yet I would argue that we become more, quote unquote, set in our ways because neuroplasticity, the ability to reshape our neural circuits, diminishes with age.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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We didn't bring up the turkeys of Davis. No, we didn't. Second of all, I want to thank you for writing your book, Why We Remember, because it's a fantastic exploration of the modern understanding of memory. still some of the mysteries that remain, but this is a field that's evolved a lot and you capture so much of the incredible findings there over the years in a very pleasurable way.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So it's a pleasure to read. And then I also want to thank you for coming here today to share with us your understanding about memory and also your sharing of your experience with ADHD and some of the tools you use, some of the struggles.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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I think all too often people hear about these scientists or physicians or people who are authorities on a topic and they don't hear about the challenges they face. And I

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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assure you that a great, great many people will appreciate the fact that you yourself have struggled with certain issues related to attention, but that you've overcome them at least as well to be able to be a functional parent and family man, professor, author, now public educator, dog owner. Second time around.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And, you know, for that and for a great many other reasons, you've educated us and you've given us a great many practical tools. It's also great to see you as a fellow punk rocker and old friend. And I even let you call me Andy. So thank you. So thanks for coming here today. And please do come back again, Charn.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about memory and ADHD with Dr. Charan Ranganath. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his book, as well as social media accounts, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Charan Ranganath. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Improve Memory & Focus Using Science Protocols | Dr. Charan Ranganath

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And by the way, for folks listening who are considering a career in science, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, prior to recording— You told me a saying that I've never heard before.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Peter Attia. Dr. Peter Attia is a medical doctor who did his training at Stanford University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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Aside from food, what exogenous molecules do you take?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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What dosage of rapamycin do you take?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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By virtue of the side effect.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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And the idea there is that you're limiting mTOR. You're causing your cells to grow less, mature slower, and in that sense, slowing down aging. Is that the idea? Yeah.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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So by the end of today's episode, you'll learn a lot about NAD. You'll learn a lot about the biological pathway. You'll learn a lot about the delivery routes, the various supplements, and why people think they may be useful, why others, perhaps even Dr. Atiyah and myself, think they may not be useful for longevity. You'll have to listen to find out what the answer is there.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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How do you feel when you're on rapamycin, aside from the canker sores?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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Does it synergize with caloric restriction or collide with caloric excess? Meaning if you're taking rapamycin, but you're slightly over your caloric needs, maybe you're trying to add a little bit of body weight or you happen to overeat a little bit just because, is it going to collide with rapamycin's potential positive impact on slowing aging?

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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I should also mention that we give somewhat of an overview or a framework for thinking about approaches to longevity. So if you're interested in things like rapamycin, metformin, and whether or not fasting can improve longevity, we get into that as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1382.4

But again, we'll have to wait and see what that shows. Without going off track too much, my understanding is that the dog study was halted because of a lack of federal funding. Is it continuing?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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Yeah. I was on NIH study sections for many years reviewing grants. I rotated off as a regular member a little over a year ago. And I can tell you that the whole process is designed to be as targeted to the best and most exciting work possible. But there's a number of features now that make it such that It's largely the work that's already mostly completed that gets funded.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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You know, like, how does that work? But anyway, we could have a whole other journal club discussion about funding, but I had to ask. I was curious. So hopefully that study will get completed, and thanks for raising those funds. Let's talk about NAD. Yes. It's in essentially every cell of the body except red blood cells, correct? Yes.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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It's generally thought to be associated with energy production and mitochondrial pathways in every single cell.

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Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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It's also, as I recall, where the story began. That's exactly right. It was some experiments where the sirtuins were mutated in one direction or the other, meaning gain of function or loss of function. These days people hear gain of function and they immediately think to pandemic-related themes. But gain of function is a way of –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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changing genes typically to augment a function, increase its robustness, or in some cases to rescue a phenotype where you have a knockout mouse that lacks a gene, so that's loss of function, or a strain of yeast that lacks a gene, and then you do the gain of function rescue experiment. You reintroduce the gene of interest. It's an important – I wouldn't even call it a control.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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It's an important experiment in any case because loss of function will tell you a lot. But gain of function and loss of function, assuming that the results jibe, tells you much, much more. This is one of the major areas – I think this is very important to highlight – where human genetics really struggles.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1707.719

because you can get humans with a mutation in a particular pathway, like, I don't know, the Sonic Hedgehog pathway. Somebody is hypomorphic for Sonic Hedgehog, and they might actually lack a major tooth up in the middle because of the role of Sonic Hedgehog at the midline. And you could say, okay, well, loss of function here. Here's the role of Sonic Hedgehog.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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But the ideal experiment is to put the gene back in and then rescue that phenotype because, as any logical mind can tell, There could be many things downstream of Sonic Hedgehog that could create the phenotype that you observe. But if you put Sonic Hedgehog back in, yes, that's still true, but you get more reassurance that that's the gene of interest.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, proper hydration is critical for the optimal functioning of all the cells in your body. And that's especially true for the neurons, the nerve cells. In fact, we know that even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish both cognitive and physical performance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1746.907

So with respect to sirtuins, as I recall, they deleted the sirtuins. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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So it's both necessary and sufficient for extended life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1835.29

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1854.496

There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1862.239

Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

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Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1897.86

It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

191.873

So to make sure that I'm getting proper hydration and electrolytes, I personally dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning and I drink that or sip that across the first half hour of the day or so. And then I also make it a point to drink another packet of Element dissolved in an equal amount of water, so 16 to 32 ounces,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1918.614

So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

1935.845

They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

210.959

at some other point during the day, and maybe even a third if I'm exercising and or sweating a lot. I should mention that Element tastes absolutely delicious. My favorite flavor is watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry flavor, the citrus flavor. Basically, I like all the flavors.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2157.611

Well, that experiment's never been done and never will be done. The joke I was trying to set up for is the one I'll make now, which is no one wants to be in the control experiment. That said, nobody wants to be in the treatment experiment either. You got me. You beat me to the punch. No one wants to be in the treatment group either because of it requires eating so little.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

225.643

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2300.8

It's incredibly interesting because I think when you look at cell biology and you see these parallel pathways, when you see these effects of experiments where changing sirtuins or changing caloric restriction independently increase lifespan, combine the two, you get this, what appears to be a synergistic effect, but it's, as you pointed out, an additive effect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2321.906

it was like a pretty straightforward experiment to do. You could just do an occlusion, right? You could then put back in the sirtuin or adjust calories and see whether or not you get the, effectively, whether the math is corrected.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2406.885

Yeah. Making a fly mutant, Drosophila mutant that overexpresses sirtuins, a worm C. elegans mutant that overexpresses sirtuins, that's a pretty quick experiment to do because of this short generation time of those species. Right. Now a mouse, It's a longer experiment, but I'm guessing all of those experiments have been done.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

241.588

Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods impact your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both short and long term health is your body's ability to manage blood glucose.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2458.351

We should probably clarify what a transgenic mouse is. I talked about knockout mice. That's when a gene or genes in some cases. is deleted from the genome. So it's null. It does not express that gene. The gain of function would be to put back that gene in. That would be a knock-in mouse.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2476.161

So in that case, you still get some normal expression of the gene from the endogenous genome, but now you have a transgene that's inserted there. And there are all sorts of important intricacies that relate to this. For instance, where the transgene is inserted. If it's downstream of an enhancer that's muscle-specific, then you can get a... mouse that it overexpresses sirtuins just in muscle.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2498.072

You can get it ubiquitously expressed. There are a number of different ways that this can happen. I'm assuming this was ubiquitous expression of, you said SIRT6? SIRT6, yeah. So every cell in the body that normally would express SIRT6 would express more SIRT6.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

25.367

Dr. Atiyah is one of the world's most trusted voices on the topics of healthspan and lifespan, and with good reason. He is known to systematically review the research literature, the clinical trials, and he maintains an avid clinical practice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2517.839

I'm guessing unless they made it clear that it was tissue-specific, that it's whole body. So we're talking about it when Peter says transgenic mouse, he's talking about a mouse that has this transgene that causes it to express more sirtuin-6 than it ordinarily would. And let's assume, although we don't know this for sure, that the other genes in this mouse are functioning as they would normally.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

255.495

To maintain optimal energy and focus throughout the day, you want to keep your blood glucose levels steady without big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to try and understand how different foods impact in my blood glucose levels.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2622.839

What sorts of things are downstream of sirtuins? And that question translated to normal English is what is changing as a consequence of increasing the sirtuin? Could it be, for instance, well, unlikely based on what we already know about caloric restriction and the fact that they are independent parallel pathways, but is it something related to glucose metabolism?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2645.491

Is it something related to clearance of senescent cells? I'm just throwing out possibilities here.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

269.663

And it's proven incredibly useful for determining what food choices I should make, when best to eat certain foods, especially around things like workouts, and when and what to eat relative to when I go to sleep in order to allow for the best possible night's sleep and stable blood sugar throughout the night and when I wake up in the morning.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

2693.971

this business of DNA repair and reducing, you know, fragmentation or mutations to DNA that are naturally occurring has been a hot idea in the field of aging for a long time. Is that because when x-rays became popular or post-nuclear fallout that people showed accelerated signs of aging? I mean, how did we get from DNA mutation to accelerated aging? Like-

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

286.917

So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, go to levels.link slash Huberman. Levels recently launched a new CGM sensor that's even smaller and has even better tracking than their previous version. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

303.409

Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3211.82

I'd like to take a quick break to let you know that the Huberman Lab team has launched a new podcast with host Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy is an expert in exercise science and human performance, and has long been a fan favorite on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3225.566

This new podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin, and it dives into topics such as how to build muscle and strength, how to improve your cardiovascular health, and how to optimize recovery and sleep for performance and much more. Andy is an absolutely fantastic educator and true expert on all things human performance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

324.946

One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3244.778

I know you'll thoroughly enjoy his new podcast and learn a ton of useful knowledge from it. So please check it out and give it a subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to podcasts now. Again, the podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3294.616

How do you activate sirtuins?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3332.991

It's also interesting because keratinocytes in skin turn over every 28 days or so. So you could imagine because it's a novel population of cells that they would have steady expression of sirtuins and NAD. Then they simply die for whatever reason, or that it starts off very high on day one of generation, then tapers off quickly. But That's not the case, it sounds like.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3384.064

What about neurons? I mean, you've got the same set of central nervous system neurons your entire life. And of course, some peripheral neurons as well, but there's some regeneration in the periphery. So we need to, let's just talk about brain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3394.811

So unless you're talking about the olfactory bulb where you have constant turnover throughout the lifespan, you have the same hippocampal neurons, except a small population, same hippocampal neurons, cortical neurons, retinal neurons that you were born Are we observing NAD levels tapering off as we age?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

342.398

Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

358.809

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3643.285

And I would say a fair number of so-called anti-aging approaches are targeting the the so-called reactive oxygen species, ROSs, which impede mitochondrial function, essentially. This is an opportunity for me to call out the work that I think is at least intriguing, which is the work of a colleague by the name of Glen Jeffery at the University College London,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3666.454

He's been in the field of visual neuroscience for a very long time. And a few years back, he started doing some experiments on animals and now also two studies published on humans showing that exposing the aged eye, so 40 and older, to red light and near infrared light for a couple minutes a few times a week can... spare certain processes involved in vision, photoreceptors. How does this work?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3694.231

Well, the idea, this isn't proven yet, the idea is that it's reducing reactive oxygen species and thereby improving mitochondrial function in what is perhaps the most metabolically active cell type in the entire body, not just the eye, which are the photoreceptors. So it's an intriguing set of studies.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3713.528

Again, we don't have all the mechanisms worked out, but it brings us around again to this idea that mitochondria are vitally important for the functioning of cells. Things that impede the function of mitochondria can either reduce the output of and or kill cells. And so anything that can improve redux... can potentially keep a cell around longer, functioning better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3738.18

So when I hear about the role of NAD in this pathway, I think like most people, I think, okay, well then I should just take more NAD and maybe I will age more slowly, or I will replace some NAD that's missing as I age in whatever cell type. Turns out that might not be so straightforward, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3755.928

I mean, I don't want to jump to supplementation just yet, but if we are to back up from NAD a little bit and look at the pathway leading to NAD, it's NR, NMN, and NAD. We'll spell these out in a moment. And this sort of competition that's out there in the market is around either infusing or in some cases ingesting NAD directly.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

376.198

If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion about NAD and longevity with Dr. Peter Attia. Peter Attia, welcome. How are you?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3783.55

Taking NMN, which is the precursor to NAD orally, I haven't heard of anybody infusing it, or taking oral form NR, which is the precursor to NMN. My understanding is that NMN is simply NR minus a phosphate group.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

38.354

So when it comes to the topic of whether or not a particular molecule or supplement or prescription drug is indeed something that we should be thinking about and perhaps even taking in order to improve our healthspan and lifespan, Dr. Atiyah is the person that I choose to sit down with and discuss it. So today we are going to discuss the so-called NAD pathway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3816.667

Because everything we're on right now is upstream of sirtuins.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3858.482

And I'm only leaping further to this discussion about how to increase NAD because I know that's in the back of people's minds. We're not going to double click here just yet. I just want to frame that up because ultimately that's where we are headed in terms of people making decisions as to whether or not they should take NR or take NMN or infuse NAD or none of the above.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

3926.14

I would say scientific justification for longevity. I'll go on record now saying that I take NMN and in some cases I will take NR and NMN and I observe, this is just end of one self-observational data, I observe a very clear positive effect, but I don't think it has anything to do with extending lifespan.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

400.832

Great to see you again. Great to be here again. Should we parse this?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

405.595

an ad thing i think we should do you mind if i set up a little bit of a framework great so for people that want to live as long as possible i figure there are at least four categories of approaches broadly speaking the first i'll just call the do's and don'ts you've talked a lot about these your book outlive beautifully covered these and i tend to regurgitate some of what you say on this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4081.656

So a couple of kind of practical notes. I've taken NR in capsule form. I've taken NMN typically in powdered form where I put it sublingually under the tongue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4100.12

No, I took NAD as an infusion. I've probably done it five or six times. And for the first 10 minutes of the infusion, you feel like somebody's stepping on your chest with a boot. Your legs cramp up. You feel nauseous. I did not take the anti-nausea med that was offered. I don't like taking things if I can avoid it. I just figured I'll just experience this. It was very uncomfortable.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4128.132

To the point where you couldn't read a paper or a book. You just want to be left alone. You actually get a little bit irritable. You're like, this is awful. Every noise in the room is a bit too loud during that first 10 minutes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4161.613

Right. I don't know what it was doing physiologically except making me feel miserable during the infusion. There are ways to adjust this even without the anti-nausea meds. For instance, you can slow the infusion. That's the typical way.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4174.837

People will put it in over the course of several hours, anywhere from three hours to as brief as 30 minutes is kind of the record that I've heard about for 500 milligrams of NAD. If you put 1,000 milligrams in there, obviously it's more painful and you have to – anyway, there are a bunch of practical considerations. You feel – now, maybe it's placebo, but one feels quite good afterward.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4199.978

So as soon as the drip is done, you feel better than – you did prior to the drip. How do you feel if you just receive an IV infusion of the same volume? I've done that because I've received saline drips. You also feel pretty good. It's hard to disentangle these things. And typically they'll put other things in the bag, glutathione, some vitamin C. You know, they tend to sell these as kits.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4225.191

I decided to try it. It seemed fine. I did it when traveling. I don't know, maybe I'm due for another one soon. But for me, the more typical way to try and increase NAD or whatever, because I don't know what it's doing exactly, but I like the effects of taking sublingual NMN. The single most Let's say salient to me anecdotal data on taking sublingual NMN is that it makes my hair grow really fast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4250.487

It makes my nails grow really fast. And I do feel an increase in energy. And I take it first thing in the morning. And what dose? One and a half grams, 1,500 milligrams.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4289.919

I'm not even approaching that at all. Well, it's clear to me, based on my read of the data, that NR can cross the cell membrane directly. Directly. Very easily. There's no obstacle to NR getting into cells. Okay. And NMN cannot because of the extra phosphate group. So that if you take it sublingually or you ingest it orally, it goes into the gut. The phosphate group is cleaved.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4316.094

And because of that, the argument is that if one were to compare the benefits of taking NR versus NMN, there are more data to support NR. as a precursor to NAD, a more effective precursor to NAD than orally ingested NMN. But some people will say, well, I'll just take more NMN than I would NR. And then this gets into the realm of cost effectiveness. It's just a commercial issue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4340.042

It starts becoming a battle between commercial sources. And I don't dispute that NR... makes more sense as a precursor, especially at dosages of, you know, 300 to 600 milligrams versus 1500 milligrams. But I've opted to take sublingual NMN mostly based on cost and are at the dosages people recommend is quite expensive.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

436.068

Namely, you want to move appropriately and often enough, so get enough zone two cardio, do your resistance training, keep nerve to muscle connection strong, avoid the sorts of things that would lead to falling and being immobile, eat right. There's a whole category of things there we're not going to talk about today, although we might touch on a bit.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4366.883

You'd be spending about 300 bucks a day, right? It's just it's not feasible. It's just not feasible. So I don't have a deep desire for my hair to grow faster or my nails to grow faster. It's more the increase in energy effect. Now, I will say that sublingual NMN is also a bit of a laxative. So there are all these, and I say that somewhat chuckling, but some people say it makes them feel better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4390.974

Well, is that because you're evacuating your bowels a few minutes or hours later and then you've feel less bloated and you have more energy, it's very unclear. I think what has not been done, as far as I know, is to compare orally ingested NR at say 600 milligrams, relatively high dose versus a gram of sublingual NMN and then actually measure blood levels of NAD.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4416.264

If that experiment has been done and I'm not aware of it, I'm not aware of it, then forgive me. Maybe someone will put it in the show note captions. But I guess this gets down to the question of how many people are taking oral NR or NMN or are taking NAD infusions, which by the way are quite expensive, anywhere from $300 to $1,000 a drip. That's pretty expensive. What benefits are they getting?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4442.988

What are they getting out of this? What are they getting? Is it an acute increase in NAD that what? That causes them to live, what, a week longer? I mean, we have no idea.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

460.481

Know your genetics and make some good decisions on the basis of your genetics. So the do's and don'ts. The second category I would put under the umbrella of calories, glucose, insulin, et cetera, that all kind of funnel in, at least in my mind, to mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, a molecule that's robustly expressed during development in essentially all cells of the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

4663.069

Because my understanding is that there are some studies that have explored the role of supplemented NR, maybe NMN as well, but certainly supplemented NR for sake of lowering inflammation to offset some of the negative effects of time zone shift, alcohol. Yeah. I have a few others listed here, overnutrition.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

488.939

and then across the lifespan tapers off. During puberty, especially, well, let's say infancy through puberty, cells are expressing so much mTOR and they're growing like crazy. And we often associate that early stage of life as youth, not aging, because we think of it as a kind of a timestamp as opposed to the verb. But I would argue as a developmental neurobiologist by training that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5115.076

Right. I totally agree. And I think... You know, at this point, I'm questioning whether or not I'm wasting my money taking NMN or NR. The reason I take NR is really for these anti-inflammation reported purported effects. I just want to pay a little bit of attention to the whole commercial battle around this because I think it's relevant. I mean, I think right now, as far as I know,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5142.369

The FDA has essentially said that NMN should not be sold as a supplement, but it is still being sold as a supplement. So there's a little bit of ignoring of the FDA's request. NR, as far as I know, is authorized for sale as a supplement. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

515.56

It's one of the most rapid phases of aging of our entire lifespan. Look at a picture of you when you were five, look at a picture of you when you were eight versus 15. You look very different and your size is robustly different.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5207.719

Well, you just answered the question I was going to ask, but I suppose the question therefore becomes, is there any benefit to taking either of them for sake of lifespan?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5280.012

One's just got a phosphate group on there. You might need to take a little bit more of the NMN versus NR or maybe a lot more, who knows. in order to get the same increase in NAD, is my understanding.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5325.624

And I should say that basal and squamous cell carcinomas are very, very common.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5438.536

Assuming somebody is averse to feeling like they have an elephant stepping on their chest. They're going to pay $750 for it, aka an NAD infusion once a week. Look, people may opt to do that. People with a disposable income could do that, drip it in slower, not feel nauseous. Increase NAD with the hope, hope, hope that maybe it's going to extend your life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5463.832

Most people considering supplementation to augment the NAD pathway are going to default to either taking NR or taking NMN.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5494.622

You could also weight train for the first hour and then enjoy some food afterwards. Lane Norton taught me that there are data showing that exercise, in particular resistance training, improves the rewarding properties of food, makes food taste better, which we've all kind of intuitively experienced. So you spend the first hour, Working out, second hour eating.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5539.526

Okay. Well, I'm going to pull a little bit from marketing – text here, but I trust these showing- Really? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because they have citations to support them and we can include the citations. I can say these are not linchpin arguments for doing one thing or the other, but we already established that NR

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5565.205

and NMN are quite similar except for the presence of a phosphate group on NR that gets cleaved off.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5597.9

Or NR. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, okay. Great. Well, then you took the words right out of the data I was going to refer to. That's right. Because I asked a few folks that helped develop some of the NR supplements. Like, what are the data that support the use of NR for increasing NAD? And they say NR can cross the cell membrane directly. NMN cannot.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5615.669

Okay, but you can just cleave the phosphate group. Right, right. Exactly. NR, they claim, I'm not, this is not my claim, but they claim that NR is, quote unquote, 25% more effective than NMN in raising whole blood NAD levels. But I'm guessing that's milligram for milligram, right? Okay, so then you just adjust the milligram dosage a little bit and so on.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5636.239

What's entirely unclear is what raising blood NAD translates to in terms of getting more NAD into cells.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

57.743

This is a pathway that's received a lot of attention in recent years as a potential target for improving lifespan, that is for living longer. Today we discuss the various molecules in this pathway and the various approaches to increasing NAD, which is the end target goal of anyone that's trying to augment the NAD pathway, so to speak. So for instance, we talk about taking and R.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

570.792

Yeah. I mean, the brain, the same brain has to learn an entirely new body every year in terms of how to move it, limb length, et cetera. So a lot of the so-called anti-aging or longevity approaches that fall under this umbrella relate to things like caloric restriction or taking drugs such as rapamycin. And of course, mammalian target of rapamycin is the target of rapamycin. Duh.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5736.456

There's something so sticky about the longevity field, just so sticky about this idea that one could take something and extend lifespan and people don't want to be in the control group. So they're willing to invest significant amounts of money to do it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5775.839

They're probably about – 30 to 50 prior to this FDA ruling, which is kind of an interesting situation in its own right. You know, what happened there was the supplement NMN, suddenly the FDA decided that it should not be sold over the counter anymore because there was a clinical trial initiated on NMN, which essentially makes NMN a drug.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5808.527

clinical testing and thereby can't be classified as a supplement any longer. That was the rationale as I understood it. But as with things like N-acetylcysteine- That was more of a lobbying effort though, I think.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5829.701

And this had happened prior for N-acetylcysteine, NAC. which some people take. It's a mucolytic. It's actually a great decongestant. If you're congested and it increases glutathione, that's my understanding. I believe somebody checked me on this. Does it decrease or increase glutathione? Increases glutathione is my understanding. If I have that wrong, someone will tell me quickly in the comments.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5852.22

My understanding is that in Europe, NAC might even be available by prescription. In the US, you can still buy it over the counter, but a few years back, The FDA said, nope, can't sell NAC any longer. And there was a pushback lobby to keep it on the market. And you can still buy it on Amazon. The same thing has more or less happened with NMN.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5874.913

certainly with nr although nr was never in question in terms of whether or not it should be sold as a supplement or not because as far as i know there's no clinical trial on nr at least not currently so there's a clinical trial on nmn which classifies it as an experimental drug and therefore the fda said nope you can't sell it as a supplement a few companies major companies pulled nmn from the market in the u.s

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5897.293

Many smaller companies just kind of watched and waited and continued to sell it. And I checked prior to the beginning of this episode and you can still buy it online. But of course, a lot of what we're saying today is kind of a, why would you? We're not really coming up with strong arguments for taking NMN, at least not in today's discussion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

5970.959

Right. And the experts in this area like Charles Brenner have pushed back hard on that, arguing that the studies were not done well. Is that – I recall.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

598.457

In an effort to essentially remove excess insulin, blood glucose, and thereby reduce reduce mTOR activity, so essentially slow cellular growth. And all that fits nicely into the logic that mTOR is associated not just with development, but with aging because development is aging.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6011.564

No. In fact, I don't want to quote him at all. But I think he would argue that sirtuins, NR, NMN – should not logically or practically be linked to efforts to extend lifespan, but that there are some interesting positive effects of augmenting NR as a means to increase NAD for sake of anti-inflammation and some of these other effects that we've been discussing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

618.864

And then I would say there's a third category, and it's the one we are going to talk about today, which is targeting specific cellular pathways that some people have deemed potentially interesting for longevity. And the pathway that we're going to spend some time on is the so-called NAD pathway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6261.53

You seem to be vigorous. You take great care of yourself. How much do you think taking rapamycin, for how many years have you been taking it? Six. Has contributed to your current state or vigor? Zero idea. This is my opportunity to ask about your belief or lack of belief in biological aging tests. Because if somebody is going to experiment with any or all of these things,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6289.046

um they may want to evaluate whether or not their biological age is changing and there are a number of these tests available and people love this stuff love them they love them i mean who wouldn't want to see that they are 51 years old but their biological age is 37. i just did a movement test the other day so it's a it's a

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

636.116

NR, NMN, NAD being the major players, and we'll talk about some of the biochemical and enzymatic steps in between. And then I suppose there's a fourth category, which we could say is the do everything, even the most esoteric of things category. This is a rare category. There are folks like Brian Johnson who spend a lot of time in this category specifically.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6469.138

Okay. Well, I bought that chart, my life in weeks. Yes. In fact, I bought two of them for reasons that are uninteresting. I've watched that chart, Phil. Not quite what you predicted, but I put my estimated lifespan to be 95. Great.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6490.653

And then I have little lines on the side of how much vigor I felt from, and just overall wellness, completely subjective of zero being like Completely cratered near death to 10, like it's best I've ever felt. But you make that note every how often? Okay. So what I did is, you know, from 10 to 15, I felt, you know, blank. And then in my 20s, I actually didn't feel so great because I was working –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6518.524

80-hour weeks, commonly. You can ask my former lab technicians. I was just talking to Fung Nguyen recently. I mean, I used to work to collapse, not healthy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6526.649

80-hour a week, maybe 100 hours occasionally, maybe 70, maybe back to 40, but just too much work, not enough sleep, nutrition not great, just not doing the right things, but just gave my 20s to being in lab, basically, and a lot of my 30s as well. So I would say from 40 to 45, my vigor was higher than in my 30s.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6552.266

And then now I track, I would say about every two months, I'll start filling in that line. And it's adjusted for by stressors and adjusted for by positive things in life. And the goal for me is to figure out what are the behavioral tools and other things I can do or take that are going to keep the vigor as high as possible. Vigor, well-being.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6573.86

And internal peace, et cetera, all of that combined, kind of what I'm calling wellness in this very subjective measure, as high as possible as I transition to my 50s, my 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I'm guessing that I'm going to have to do many more things in my 80s and 90s in order to maintain balance. a similar, hopefully, level of vigor and well-being than I do now.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

659.157

taking very high doses of polyphenols, limiting their caloric intake to just early part of the day. I think he eats dinner at 11 a.m. I don't know if it still qualifies as dinner at 11 a.m., but his final bite of calories is, I believe, at 11 a.m. Doing everything from red light to PRP, platelet-rich plasma, excuse me, and essentially the kitchen sink approach to longevity and aging.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6597.708

And the question is, will I be able to?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6610.834

Yeah. Because I think the chart is great. I think the chart, more than any supplement for longevity, gives one a visual perspective of where they sit in this long arc. And I don't think the brain is very good at anchoring us to the notion that we are mortal. Because if we think about that for even a few moments too long, it makes us anxious. And I think we are very good at avoiding that. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6674.483

I better get cracking on some stuff.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

688.237

Did I miss any categories?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

6924.761

Do you avoid going through the non, let's just say the non-traditional scanner at the airport? the one that might use higher levels of radiation? No. Do you think about how many flights you take as a source of radiation? No.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7087.302

I think you just relieved a lot of people of some unnecessary concern.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7103.293

Yeah, grip strength, jumping, cognitive function. I mean, I've got very good genes in terms of longevity on one side of my family, pretty good on the other, although not as robust. I mean, if I just look historically. Yeah, who knows, right? I mean, but my sense is that I'll live to be 95 if, you know, barring, you know, bullet bus or cancer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7188.566

Yeah, a short nap would reset me near completely. Yeah. I got more colds and flus in that time because I wasn't taking such good care. But then again, I was indoors more, so it's an imperfect experiment. But you're right. I think that as I've approached 50... I need to do more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7305.181

Mine was never very good, so...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7359.44

Sorry to interrupt, but since we've been talking about molecules and energetic pathways- What about energy? Just that get up and go. Let's just say after a decent night's sleep, seven and a half hours, waking up same time more or less, 6.30, 7 a.m. probably for you or me. And – Why is it that as we get older, we have less energy? Our mutual good friend, the late Ben Barris used to ask about this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7386.984

He used to say, he called me Andy. He was like, Andy, why do I have so much less energy? I was like, I don't know. I don't know. It's a great question. Now, unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer. So there may have been other things going on, but that was prior to the cancer, at least as far as I know. You know, it's a very interesting question. Why do we have less energy?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7405.194

And I don't think anyone's ever been able to answer that question.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7502.145

Maybe, although... Up until now, we've been talking about all these ways to try and increase NAD in the bloodstream and hopefully in cells. And I don't know, I take my NMN and my NR and I feel a little bit of a boost in energy, but I can't say that it's so significant that I feel like I can sprint back and forth just spontaneously.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7607.721

Like I love Froot Loops, right? Interesting. By way of contrast, the food part is easy for me. I like healthy food and- Oh, I like healthy food.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7615.963

Okay. Yeah, I don't like unhealthy food. I've weaned myself off. I never really liked it that much. I mean, I like a great tasting slice of pizza or ice cream every once in a while, but I much prefer- Meat, fish, chicken, eggs, fruits, vegetables, rice, oatmeal. I just like that stuff. I'm a weirdo that way, I suppose.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7632.092

But on the topic of exercise as it relates to vigor and longevity, I'm intrigued by how some forms of exercise give us more energy. especially the same day, and how some forms of exercise or even timing of exercise tends to deplete us. Because I think one of your major calls to the public has been to move more for sake of their healthspan and lifespan.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7659.251

But because of the time investment that it takes to work out in a gym or to go for a run or a ruck, I think some people think, well, that's a lot of time, but if it gives you more energy and more focus to do other things, well, then it's great. So it's not just about living longer. It's about being able to do more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7675.185

And I've noticed, I don't have any science to back this up, but I'd love someone to run a test on this, that if I complete my workout before 9 a.m., even if I have to start it while I'm a little bit fatigued, I have more energy all day long. But that if I initiate that workout, say mid to late morning, I'm pretty tired in the afternoon. It's like I give everything I have to that workout.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7699.117

And so it becomes a little bit defeating since I'm not a professional athlete or even an amateur athlete. I'm working out for healthspan, lifespan, but I want to do exercise that gives me more life during my waking hours. I think somebody should study this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7713.602

And I'm convinced that it has something to do with the change in body temperature that occurs across the day and the additional change in body temperature that occurs as a consequence of exercise.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7729.249

I haven't thought about it that much, but not so much. Not so much. And I wonder whether folks like our friend Jocko Willink are able to do so much. He has so much vigor, that guy, in part because he basically exercises just after the lowest temperature phase of the circadian rhythm. And he uses exercise presumably to drive himself out of that and get that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7752.328

temperature increase, that's the consequence of waking. But in his case, he's waking up so early, 4.30 is when he starts those workouts. So it's something for people to play with.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7761.212

It's something that I don't think gets discussed enough, which is, yes, you should exercise, do resistance training, do cardiovascular training, but play with the timing of those and see how at a given intensity, it impacts your energy levels for the remainder of the day. I think it's an important metric that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7780.12

Again, I just don't see a lot of attention to because I think if people could experience the increase in energy that is the consequence of working out at the right intensity in the right way at the right times for them, they'd be much more apt to do it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7793.851

It wouldn't feel like this – like spending money on something that sure will make you live longer but then you're depleted and you can't do cognitive work. There's something pretty impressive about the fact that as far as I know –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7805.319

The last three, let's just call them, I don't want to call anyone out specifically, major pillars of the high-level administration at Stanford School of Medicine, to my knowledge, were all 5 a.m. runners. There's something about early morning exercise. And my good friend, Eddie Chang, who's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF, he's been on this podcast, known him since we were seven years old.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7825.848

He's an early morning exerciser, and then he's got tons of energy all day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7844.737

Yeah, I don't doubt it. I just have noticed that in the few times in my life where I've kick my own butt to get out and start working out really early, I have more energy all day long. Sometimes I still require a brief nap, but it's a pretty striking effect as compared to the 10 a.m. workout effect. So I've started setting a standard of trying to get my workout done before 9 a.m.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7866.948

So anyway, it's something for people to play with because the more energy to live in your waking hours, perhaps not longer, but certainly have more energy in terms of output, I think is a significant and undervalued parameter. So let's quickly return to supplements. We, I think, are converging on an answer about NR, NMN, and NAD, which is you don't take them. Correct. I take NR and NMN

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7900.202

with not a lot of religious adherence, I should say. If I ran out, I might not buy it for a while. And the only observed effect for me is this accelerated hair growth, which is a pain in the butt, frankly, because it just means I have to get my hair cut more often. I'm not trying to grow my hair faster, but okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

7917.034

What are some other supplements, if any, that you take that are peripheral to this pathway or separate from this pathway? Rapamycin is a prescription drug only, right? So are there any over-the-counter things that you take that you would place into the lifespan category? Maybe they touch into healthspan as well. I'm happy to list off what I do, but what are your, let's just say top five at least?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

80.731

versus NMN versus direct infusions, or even orally taking NAD. And we compare them in terms of both what's known and what is not known about their ability to get into cells and any efficacy they may have for either longevity or healthspan.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8324.062

Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8325.983

Okay. I'll try and move through my list pretty quickly. I may miss one or two things and I don't know, maybe we'll put the list someplace online and fill in any gaps. I definitely take AG, AG1, you know, my typical ad read. I've been doing it since 2012. That's true. I take one or two servings a day, three if I'm traveling. And I'll generally do that first thing in the morning or in the evening.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8355.41

For me, it's really about capping off the vitamin minerals that I might be lacking in my diet, and also the whole adaptogen business, I think, and polyphenols. I'm very interested in Pendulum because part of the reason I take AG1 is for the gut health aspect. Bowel movements are more where I'd want them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8381.443

I mean, it sounds kind of weird to talk about, but you just feel better when your gut motility is right. I feel like it adjusts my gut motility so it's neither too fast nor too slow. So that's first and foremost. I take a quality fish oil. either the one that AG makes or Carlson's in liquid form that has that lemon flavoring. And I make sure I get above one gram per day of EPA.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8408.803

So that's usually a tablespoon, sometimes two tablespoons. I make sure that I get enough D3, typically from the dropper, 5,000 IU per day, approximately. Sometimes 3,000, sometimes 7,000. I kind of play around that. And I test my blood levels. I also take methyl B12. And I also take Tonga Ali. So I take one capsule of that in the early part of the day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8435.028

That has lowered my sex hormone binding globulin, freeing up a bit more testosterone. That's why I like it. And I take a couple of green tea capsules in the morning. I drink yerba mate. That's more of a stimulatory effect. And I take the NMN in powder form, sometimes NR as well. And again, if I run out of that, I tend to go long periods of time without. I use Element as an electrolyte. So-

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8459.616

People are probably noticing this is all pretty basic. I take, in my case, 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day. I sometimes forget to take it. That's why I take 10 grams. I'll sometimes miss a day. And I certainly feel the effects of that in the gym because of the greater water volume in the muscles.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8476.399

But there are a lot of data on creatine monohydrate for sake of either maintaining or offsetting some of the cognitive dysfunction associated with sleep deprivation, maybe aging altitude and some other things as well. And then for a few months I was playing around with, let's say, nicotine gums. I stopped doing that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8498.318

First of all, I was dipping it and I ended up lifting for an entire episode of the Lex Friedman podcast that I only realized later. So I stopped taking it also because it gave me a kind of a tick and cough when I wasn't chewing it. And then I felt like I needed to chew it and it's a little too stimulatory for me. Before sleep, I take magnesium threonate, really bullish on magnesium as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8523.571

Apigenin, 50 milligrams, which is essentially chamomile extract and theanine. And occasionally I'll take 900 milligrams inositol also, or instead, I kind of mix those up and around. And then I use a quality whey protein as a protein replacement, that kind of thing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8540.953

And I've played around with various things like Shilajit and sometimes get the sense that it's having an effect, but then I'll stop taking it for long periods of time. There are very few things that I've stayed with for long periods of time, and I basically just described what those are. If ever someone were to design a supplement that would provide more energy all day long that wasn't caffeine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8565.523

I'd probably look to that, but I ingest caffeine in the form of yerba mate and coffee. I've played around with caffeine tablets, taking 50 milligrams of caffeine in tablet form. I mention that only because it has a distinctly different feel than ingesting caffeine through liquid form. It feels stronger, and I don't know why that is.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8587.304

In fact, there's a very well-known podcaster who drinks peppermint tea and takes caffeine tablets as a way to, I don't know, drink peppermint tea, which sounds very nice and mellow, but also get the stimulant effect. So anyway, that's pretty much it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8600.756

And then I do a lot of things, as I know you do, mainly based on suggestions you've made about getting zone two cardio, rucking, weight vest walks and hikes. three times a week resistance training, three times a week cardiovascular training, one long, one medium, one short. And I try and hit the sauna and the cold once a week. And yeah, that's pretty much it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8624.013

I think there are a bunch of other supplements that are really interesting and kind of fun to play with if one wants to, like 600 milligrams of alpha-GPC or 900 milligrams of alpha-GPC in a double espresso prior to a workout. You feel different. It's a stimulant. But I don't like to do that too often because of the increase in TMAO that occurs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8641.564

And then you have to take 600 milligrams of garlic to offset that increase. And you start getting- If we believe TMAO matters. Right. If you believe TMAO matters. I don't. Okay, great. Even better. I'll maybe skip the garlic. So things like that. I prefer to just eat garlic anyway. So there are a bunch of things like that that are kind of fun to play with as pre-workouts.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8659.559

But yeah, that's the core supplement regimen. And it's the one I've stuck with for, gosh- at least 10 years, or in the case of AG, more than that. So I should say, because any discussion around supplements, I think it's going to have people pricking up their ears to, okay, this is like a sales pitch or something. I absolutely want to go on record.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8683.635

The things you choose to do and not do are going to have much greater effect on your health span and lifespan, that is the behavioral things, in particular sleep, exercise, nutrition, sunlight, et cetera, than any one supplement that you're going to take. So I do view supplements, I think, through the appropriate lens, which is that they are indeed a supplement. They are not necessary.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8708.502

Many of them are simply sufficient to serve as an insurance policy or to augment mental and physical health, maybe longevity, in ways that make it worthwhile given my disposable income that I want to devote to supplements. But I don't think – you need them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8801.121

Okay, so I completely agree with you. Exercise, sleep, nutrition, and emotional health, not listed in any particular order. Peter and I both completely agree. Those are the critical four. Before we close, NR, NMN, NAD, and NAD in particular, how do we view this? Is it a pathway that we should be focusing on in terms of supplementation or infusions for sake of extending our life?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8825.787

My answer on that is no.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8910.439

Great. Thank you for that clear stance and the willingness to change it in light of new data. Peter, so good to sit down with you again and talk science, talk health, and in this case, talk about the supplements that we're not going to take in addition to the ones that we do take. We will do this again sometime very soon, hopefully. In Austin. Would love that. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, man.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8932.992

Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with Dr. Peter Attia. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, you can leave us up to a five-star review on either Spotify or Apple.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8951.587

Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8967.918

If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, other of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

8987.832

So again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs on everything from neuroplasticity and learning to optimizing your sleep, to improving dopamine regulation,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

9008.192

to foundational fitness protocol that includes both resistance training and cardiovascular training. It details sets and reps. All of that and more is completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. And I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

9026.418

Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about NAD and longevity with Dr. Peter Attia. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

98.24

Dr. Atiyah and I compare and contrast the literature on this, again, both research and clinical literature, and we discuss whether or not he or I take NAD, NMN, or NR. And if so, or if not, the reasons for that. We also each go through our own supplement regimen, which of course reflects what we do believe can potentially have an effect on healthspan and or lifespan.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

1931.719

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

2868.738

Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

3564.195

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

4470.753

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

4672.904

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

5080.92

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

6371.337

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

6565.832

Mm-hmm.

Huberman Lab

How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

7003.651

Right.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin is a former child prodigy who began playing the game of chess at six years old. And by the time he was 16 years old,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10018.756

Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10020.478

So he's an awesome... I've been connected to him through Martha back, the previous guest on this podcast. And she spent... They're good friends. They've spent a lot of time in Londolozi together. And I'd love to get Boyd Vardy on here.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10077.091

You've got a process that seems to work very well, at least up until this point. There's no reason to think it wouldn't work well, especially given that you said not exactly, leaving that openness to changes in our biology, life events in and for people around us.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1009.991

Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin-free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well. As I mentioned, I love the Titanium Always Pan Pro from Our Place. I cook eggs in it most mornings, and the titanium pan is designed in a way that allows the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1028.964

I also cook burgers on it, and it really puts a nice sear on the burger without the meat sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting out on the counter or stove.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10295.151

You know, this concept of energy is a complicated one and there's no clear definition anyway. But when I think about energy, I don't think about caloric energy. I think of neural energy. And I think about certain neural circuits like that. Like if you, like I love the feeling of excitement and tension that then is funneled into a specific activity that then yields some new vista repeat.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10319.658

You know, it's just, that's science and that's learning. The day I realized that I'll never, you know, saturate all the knowledge that I could gather, organize and disseminate through the podcast. I was like, F yes. Like, that's just great because there's, but I realize also that thing, we can saturate ourselves internally. We can drive ourselves to the point of no replenishment.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10341.353

We can, you know, get so narrow focus. That's why I think so much about aperture in time and space. We can get so narrow focus that we, we end up, you know, like a, like a gopher that, you know, dug our way into a desert. And then we're like, or you're just far from your family or far from home, you know, because you just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10359.645

So, you know, I think, what is it, you know, like eagle vision, you know? I think that the diving birds are probably the ultimate in terms of having panoramic vision. Do you know this?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10371.433

They have a horizon viewing density of cells so they can view the horizon and they have a pupil to view the fish so that they can dive and grab the fish despite the refraction of light under the water because the fish isn't actually where they see it. So when people say eagle vision versus, you know, like... you know, like predator vision up close or something.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1039.85

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Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10397.451

Yeah, so they're flying and they're tracking the horizon And they're also tracking things right below them simultaneously. That to me is the ultimate state to try and achieve in terms of space and time tracking. That's a beautiful metaphor. And they have to also adjust for, right, the refractory.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10426.233

Yeah. Diving seabirds are the ones that really just... I'm going to do it. They're the ultimate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10434.621

Okay, great. Yeah, I can send you some literature there. I'd love it. The time unit of a day is what most people can manage in their minds. Maybe you could return to this cycle of conscious focus, stimulus response and getting out of that. I love the example of going to take a piss because everyone does it. I do think too many people do it holding a phone. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10464.36

Can't be good for a number of reasons. Maybe just walk us through that. So do you think it's – let me ask a series of short questions. So when I wake up in the morning, for instance, like many people, I'm not – I don't feel immediately alert. I don't feel like I could just dive into writing if writing is the most important thing I need to do that day or – I have some transition time.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10486.778

Do you think that people should embrace natural transition times on the time scale of a day or that they should train themselves to like, you know, bounce into effort, like go with the flow or, or force oneself through, through the door?

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10526.342

Oh, yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10532.088

We'll put a link to it. Such a good book. So good. I'm so glad that Tim Ferriss, as who we're referring to, collected all these habits of different writers. And like, some of them are so quirky and crazy, and some are downright dangerous.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10568.446

Some are out partying all night, drugs, alcohol, caffeine. Others are super regimented and monk-like. It's the range of daily architectures is so vast.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1063.82

Yeah, thank you. We'll definitely revisit certain time points and themes there. I can imagine as a young boy playing chess, you have your own strategies, you're developing an understanding of what works for you, but of course you, as a young kid, are also getting into the mind of the other player.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

108.032

In fact, throughout today's episode, I promise that you will constantly be reflecting on where you experience things like tension and fear, both in your personal life, your professional life, your educational life, whatever it is that you're trying to learn and pursue in life. Today's conversation, thanks to Josh, will allow you to look at that, understand it better,

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1081.152

You actually described that your coach or coaches were encouraging you to get into a different mindset, one that was not your default or trained up mindset, less focused on chaos and aggression and more in this this other mode of playing by thinking about these other types of chess players and ways to play chess.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10843.624

this difference between physical endeavors and cognitive endeavors, I think is so key. Nowadays, most people are involved in cognitive endeavors and there's so much, it's basically like being in a glass house with windows everywhere. I mean, social media, texting, windows, internet connection on the computer. There's just so many points of entry and where one can become distracted.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10865.962

Whereas if you paddle out to ocean, you know, sure you could bring your phone perhaps, but you're limited by the environment and the need for safety of the number of things that you can think about.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10898.046

I'm learning to turn stuff off while I work. Um, I mean, I have had to learn to just fight things back because when I started in science, I mean, I didn't have a smartphone or I didn't any of that. And, um, yet one really has to fight nowadays for their freedom from these interruptions. So it's something that people really have to cultivate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

10917.147

And so in terms of the structure of that day, you pose a question for the day, like the most important question, would it be like, let's say, like I'm working on a revision of this book. that I delayed release on because I wanted to add a bunch of things to it. So would one say the most important question is how do I finish this book today or is there – I'm guessing it's more conceptual than that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11013.872

And that's usually where people, including myself, pivot away. I'm thinking outside of the work domain now. Like, like, ah, like I don't want to think about, like it's when we tend to, I noticed that there's an infinite amount of distraction available nowadays, right? if we want it.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1103.331

So I can imagine that most kids are not weaned, their brain isn't developing around a game, right? It seems that your brain was built, the developmental neuroplasticity that's so robust in early childhood was built around this game that we call chess. And it seems to me that you were encouraged to develop a theory of mind that wasn't just your own, which is itself, I think is really unique, right?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11030.225

And, you know, audio books and podcasts, and I think podcasts are wonderful, but, you know, they can be a source of distraction from the critical question we need to be asking, or they can be a source of answers for perhaps the critical questions we're asking. But there's just so many of these opportunities to just look away from something that is like a – it's like a emotional infection.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11052.962

It's different than an infection in your skin that's nagging because you can feel it there and you want to get that thing out, right? Very primal instinct, like get that thing out, get the infection out. This is like an emotional infection that you can just kind of not see if you choose to turn away. But those are the things that really get you over time.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11131.568

First thing in the morning is when I get my insights or understanding or when the truth hits me square in the face. Like there's no avoiding. I wake up, I think about like, okay, that's the thing I got to deal with. And I tend to write it down right away. Try not to write it down on my phone. I think having a point of capture that doesn't offer any other distractions.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11148.769

That's why I'm a big believer in pen and paper.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11181.069

Yeah, it's all stimulus response. You're going into stimulus. If people can start to think about being reflective versus in stimulus response, I think that's sort of like the widest binning of all this. I have to say the shower. I've talked about this thing about why people have insights in the shower with my friend. I'd love to introduce you to him at some point.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11198.112

We've been friends since we were seven years old. My friend, Dr. Eddie Chang, he's a neurosurgeon and the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. And he studies speech and language. And he's taken people with locked-in syndrome and developed AI algorithms so that they can speak through a screen with their face moving in real time by decoding human speech or human speech cortex.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11216.395

And a truly brilliant individual. He's been on this podcast. He'll come back again. Ask him about the shower thing because he used to work on neuroplasticity of the auditory system. We think, we wonder if it's the kind of white noise of the shower as well. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11232.89

Because Eddie's done beautiful work showing that it's the signal to noise in the auditory system that defines whether or not a certain pattern of speech or auditory cue gets remembered. So when you have this in the background, let's just put this in the terms that we've been referring to this up until now, the thoughts that surface above that noise have a big sharp peak relative to the background.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11255.221

So it's the signal to noise. Whereas certainly the opposite would be when you're on your phone and you're scrolling through and you're looking at all the thoughts and feelings and stuff of other people. So how do you capture your own thoughts in terms of which are and filter them through what's meaningful and what's not meaningful? is I think actually a really important question to begin with.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11274.719

And white noise background with very deprived visual stimulation, most showers aren't that interesting. It's white noise, blank walls, a few things that are familiar to you, so they basically disappear from your visual field. And the idea is that thoughts then can that are constantly geysering up through your unconscious mind can be captured because everything else is noise.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11299.344

Perhaps, this is a hypothesis. And maybe I'll put you and Eddie together sometime and just be an observer. That's powerful. So, I mean, that's how we learn language. It's the error signals against the background noise. This is how you fix stutter. You create background noise. You increase noise, which actually elevates signal in the auditory system, oddly, in any case.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1130.369

I mean, most six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 year olds might be told, hey, listen, you know, the reason they were mean to you at school is like, they just hate themselves. Or, you know, they just didn't think about whether or not to pick you, you know, first or last for the game or whatever it is, right? You know, that you get told to do that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11325.069

So you found that four and a half hours... was the sweet spot of a focused work. But for some people, it might be an hour. They might need to train up that level of focus.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1147.173

But for you, it became a, it seems an intense practice of trying to learn to get into the mind of another while holding onto your own sense of what's you versus them. And so as a developmental neurobiologist, I understand this is like perhaps one of the most important events in the development of our brain. Seems that your brain was built up around that dynamic.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11529.437

Living one's life like a work of art.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11532.36

Beautiful.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11534.221

Let's do it. Well, clearly you are. I'm in the fight, man. You're in the fight and you're setting an incredible example. and you have your entire life, which is remarkable and so deeply appreciated.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11551.068

I have to say, and now I will reveal this, that when I started this podcast, I had a short list of people that would be kind of like pinch me guests, not because I want the guests to pinch me, but like, wow, like I can't believe I'm sitting down with blank. And you were on that list. I've read the art of learning. I've, you know, I watched and read everything I could about your, your work.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11573.497

And, um, I did see that the search for Bobby Fisher with the understanding that that's accurate about certain things and probably inaccurate about others. So if people choose to watch that, they should keep that in mind. It is Hollywood. Yep. Um, more importantly, um, we've had this chance to sit down and do this. And I have to say, I, uh,

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11593.826

I gained so much from your incredible precision, but also scope of observation in the world. Because I'm not a basketball player, I don't know how to play chess. and yet I've learned so much from you and your writings and your teachings, and just the chance to sit down here and to learn from you. I know I'm speaking on behalf of myself and literally millions of people.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11621.231

I just want to say thank you for living your life like a work of art and for incorporating public education, which is what we're doing here, into this set of pursuits that you've been after, one after the other, but that are bound by this set of core themes. So without getting too abstract, I just want to say thank you so much for coming here, for educating us, for making us think.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11652.073

I know it's going to change people's thoughts and behavior for the better. And the only question left is to say, would you please come back and talk to us again more?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11671.486

I feel the same way.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11674.068

Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Josh Waitzkin. To learn more about Josh's work and to find a link to his book, The Art of Learning, which by the way, I highly recommend, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11692.478

Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11706.161

If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1171.55

And so now you coach peak performers and so much of coaching and teaching Being a parent is to get into the mind of another. The difference is when you're a parent, you can think back to being a child and at least get some general sense of what that's like.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11721.933

So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11740.247

For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11757.045

to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11779.741

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11798.676

Cold exposure, get a lot of questions about that. Deliberate heat exposure and on and on. Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should mention that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

11815.5

Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Josh Waitzkin. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1186.986

Stepping back from what I just said, and I realize that there's a lot of words there, but do you think that what you're doing when you approach a practice – like Tai Chi or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or science or math or music from the perspective of a performer or a teacher is that you're getting into the mind of someone else

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1215.077

you're getting it, you're trying to, or you're trying to stay in your own mindset. I'm sorry I'm not being more succinct with this, but I think that, you know, as humans, we do this. Like I'm sure our dogs look up at us and say, oh, like they're happy with me or they're sad with me, but they're, you know, the algorithms they're running are more simplistic.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1233.182

I mean, we as the most sophisticated old world primates do this so spectacularly well. And it seems that much of your career and your life has been built around these kinds of dynamics.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1245.46

So put simply, what is your mindset when you approach a practice that's just you in the practice versus your mindset when you approach a practice when it's you and another, a competitor, versus when you're trying to teach something, you and a bunch of different minds, but there's a common goal? Okay, so there's really three big questions wrapped in there.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

127.802

and know where to apply work, when to relax, when to push forward, and in effect, how to become a better learner, both of yourself and whatever it is that you happen to be pursuing in life. We have a saying in science, which is that sometimes you encounter somebody who is truly N of one, meaning a sample size of one in a category all by themselves. Josh Waitzkin is truly an N of one.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1273.859

15 really big questions. And my audience gets upset at the length of these questions. But I think for me, it's important to just kind of set this out there as a buffet from which you can select anything or discard anything that you like.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1314.663

So you're trying to unpack his strategy. Always. And you're assuming that he has or she has a strategy.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1493.301

That's a lot of plates to spin. And I guess what I said before, not so clearly, is that for a young mind to be able to learn to spin all those plates is incredible. It's clearly possible, it's unique, but it's possible you did that. But it takes a young mind or an adult mind out of its own unique experience.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1518.151

So this is eventually how we'll circle back to pre-consciousness versus post-consciousness. But in the meantime, when was it that you first recall thinking not, oh, I'm going to beat this guy, but sensing, you know, he's getting nervous or he's confident, or he can sense that I'm nervous, or I'm going to set a trap and just, you know, feeling out, you know, whether or not they detect the trap.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

152.29

I know of no other person like him or even close to him in terms of his ability to live a unique life path and to take what he learns and to put it out into the world so that others may benefit. He lives with a tremendous amount of intentionality for the people he loves, for the things he loves, and with the intention of helping others learn how to learn better.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1547.733

I mean, it's just a lot.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1680.165

This is the opposite of Asperger's or autism, by the way, what you're describing is a hypertrophy set of circuits for theory of mind in a very young kid. So to be able to understand what's happening around you, and I think for many people, the joys of childhood are really about not being aware of what's going on around you. The psychologist would refer to, this is like a lack of impingement.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1705.21

Impingement is when like a kid is playing and they're really enjoying something and then suddenly they decide they don't want to play anymore and the parent doesn't want to be bothered. So they say, no, no, no, no, like keep playing. You know, they're like impinging on the kid's reflexive desire to do something or not do something. This isn't about keeping them safe.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1721.342

This is in the domain of safety. But at least within the channel of chess, it seems that you developed your entire understanding of the psychology of human beings, except for, of course, you had an experience at home of family and friends. But chess certainly cut a wide trough through your development.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

173.114

I must say it was a true honor to sit down with Josh. I've been a huge fan of his work for a very long time. you'll also learn that he's a really nice person. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1843.552

What do you think it is about failure or missing the mark in some way that catalyzes change. I mean, I always say that, you know, your brain has no reason to change if you're just in trying to learn something and you're in flow, you're getting, you know, most people associate being quote unquote in flow with getting everything correct, doing everything correctly.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1864.695

Um, I don't think that was the original definition that Cheeks and I intended, but, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

187.237

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this podcast episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin, welcome. Thank you, man. Great to be here.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1870.073

the neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us that it's only under conditions in which there's some mismatch between what you're trying to do, like even, you know, like this has been studied in terms of reaching for an object and there's a mirror displacement or a prism displacement or something, you eventually can learn to error correct because the cup is actually over there as opposed to where you see it.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1890.618

But it is the deployment of these chemicals inside of us, adrenaline and noradrenaline and dopamine, in particular, those three, they're cousins, the catecholamines that tells the, at a neurochemical level, tells the synapses, wait, something needs to change.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1905.302

I mean, the brain doesn't have any reason to change unless there's frustration, agitation, or at least some neurochemical change associated with those things that we call frustration and agitation. So do you think these big, what feel like cataclysmic fails set a sort of window of plasticity in which we can change? I often didn't think that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1924.482

That it's only through like the devastation of a huge loss that the brain is now set up for a bunch of new learning. Certainly we wouldn't want to design the system that way, but as I always joke, you know, I wasn't consulted the design phase and you weren't either. We just had to work with what's there. Like big failure. Why do you think that sets a wave front of change?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1956.752

Yeah, maybe we should talk about that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1972.748

You said, I'm not a scientist, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow. And I said, trust me, you're a scientist. Yeah. I do science through the lens of a certain understanding of mechanism and structure function and some processes. And you do science through the lens of experience and drawing core concepts.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

1992.233

parallels and principles in different domains and at different levels of from unskilled all the way up to virtuosity. That's kind of how I see it.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

205.299

I feel like I've known you a long time because I saw the search for Bobby Fischer and I learned about the real human that was about you. And I read The Art of Learning and I must say I'm a fan and somewhat obsessed with the uniqueness of your arc and the choices you've made and your understanding of learning as a process and its universal properties, its specific properties in different contexts.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

230.906

So I'm excited to dive in. I think for people that perhaps are not familiar with you, maybe you could just give us a broad overview of your backstory, like the things that you've really focused on in kind of chunks, if you will, just for a couple of minutes so that people can get familiar with the incredible things you've done.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

24.987

had become a national champion many times over as well as an international champion in fact he achieved the level of international master which is one of the highest levels of achievement in the game of chess for anyone of any age his early life achievements were the topic and focus of the book and movie searching for bobby fisher he then quit playing the game of chess and moved on to martial arts the study of philosophy at columbia university new york

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

252.441

And I think that reflects the uniqueness of your choice-making process, which then we'll get into.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2595.958

Oh, my God, and love. Yeah. I mean, breakups are devastating. They're a death of sorts. Yeah. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2616.849

Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2629.775

The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2649.724

But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2662.415

I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2682.992

For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2708.975

Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the fact It's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2719.026

Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2738.664

What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2751.873

Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2773.464

Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. I have a friend who's a trauma therapist, addiction expert. And, you know, occasionally you'll hear these tragedies of typically it's young guys who the girlfriend breaks up with them and they commit suicide. And for years he would work with families of these people, these, these young guys.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2799.82

And he finally connected the dots and he realized that in every case it was as if there was no future whatsoever because it was their first relationship. And it, when you hear it, you just go, Oh, it makes so much sense. But you know, the 16 year old and 18 year old brain, however old these kids were, it's, it's devastating. I, I,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2820.486

I want to make sure that I ask about devastation, because you said that you were devastated. You experienced a tremendous amount of pain from these losses, in particular the one that you just described. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you about what that was like.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2837.52

I don't want to spin off into a discussion about the science of grief, but I did an episode about grief and it was really surprising to learn that most of what you hear about in pop culture, that there are these very specific stages of grief and you progress through them linearly. None of that is true. All of modern research says that it's not disbelief, anger, acceptance.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2855.843

It's like a hodgepodge of different emotions depending on time of day and middle of the night. But the core feature, and I find this so interesting, is that grief, whether or not it's

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2865.336

what I would consider kind of trivial grief, like losing your favorite pen or a watch that you really love, okay, an object versus somebody extremely close to you, a parent, a loved one, a child, God forbid, that the brain systems that map memory onto action are disrupted in grief such that, you know, you wake up each day and you want to go see the person or call them. And so it's a

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2891.008

what grief really represents is a remapping of your understanding about what you can do with your physical body to create action and interaction with this person that's now gone. And so the remapping is one of the nervous system having to do all this no-go. We talk in terms of inaction systems and the basal ganglia of the brain. You have go programs and no-go programs.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2911.916

There's some other stuff too, but it's mostly go or no-go. And basically grief is this taking of a – depending on how long and how deeply you knew the person, a tremendous amount of neural real estate and algorithms that were all go. You could text them, you could call them, you could hug them, you could kiss them, you could listen to them, you could smell them. And now it's all no go.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2934.554

And that we think is what we experience as grief. Now, in terms of losing a very important chess match, when you talk about being in pain and in grief, What was that like? Was it, did that mean sleepless nights, disbelief? And at what point do you think you were able to say, okay, you know what, I'm going to start thinking about this constructively.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2955.8

I'm going to turn this into a go as opposed to just trying to, you know, get in your time machine and travel back in time, which of course is impossible. What was that early experience of devastation like and how did it transmute into growth?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

2997.994

And loss isn't relative. You know, I mean, the fact that we're sitting right now not far from, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of homes that have been wiped away doesn't change other losses. Like we sometimes will say, well, at least we're, you know, I have a lot of friends that lost their homes. They'll say, well, at least we have our health, we have our things, you know, okay.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3020.011

And so we can do this, but it's not how the human emotion system responds reflexively to our own losses. So I don't think it's like dismissive or sociopathic to experience big loss in one's life as a big loss, even if it's not the worst possible loss. It's just not how we're wired.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3194.204

You have to be in a mode of theory of mind with yourself about your future self somehow. And this is what I think losses are so beneficial for is that if you've had a couple of breakups, you realize that you can fall in love again. If you've only had breakups, perhaps you think, well, it always leads to a breakup.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3214.197

But you know that the process of moving forward is the only way to test that hypothesis again. And so I think repeated failure – is essential, right? Because with repeated failure means that there was also repeated fighting one ways back after failure.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3234.06

So yeah, I think sometimes not to take us into a different course of story, but just very briefly, the first manuscript I ever submitted in graduate school took forever to get published. And it went from the highest of journals down to a good journal, solid journal, but it took forever. And that was so beneficial.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3256.465

I was crushing at the time, but my reward circuitry is built up around very long latency between effort and final outcome. I'm just used to long waits between figuring out what's going to happen. And actually, one of the weirdest things about podcasting or social media is that I feel like you go to, quote unquote, to publication so fast. It's like, whoa. Projects used to take two years.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3283.834

And then you get reviews and then this, you know. So I think your early devastating failure or failures, because you had a few of them in there at least. Oh, a lot more than a few. Probably set you up for tremendous frustration tolerance. And this, not just hearing, I mean, the words, this too shall pass, they're helpful, but that's really something that needs to be experienced in my view.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3383.407

Do you believe in optimal levels of arousal for different aspects of practice or game? Autonomic arousal is something that I've worked on for many years, and one of the most impressive features, I think, of our brains as humans. First would be our ability to think into the past, present, or future, or combination of those two.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3404.678

If other animals do that, they don't do it nearly as well, and they certainly don't Create technologies to bridge those different time scales. That's number one. But the other one is our visual and temporal aperture of focus. So when we are in a state of elevated arousal, our visual aperture shrinks. I'm sure you're familiar with this. And we slice time more finely. It's like a higher frame rate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3430.263

which is why people who, for instance, see a devastating traumatic car crash report experiencing things in slow motion, right? Because their frame rate is high, like a slow motion video. Whereas when we are relaxed, our frame rate is larger bins of time. And I feel like so much of the discussion around things like flow and optimal states for learning have to do with

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3459.076

Assuming that there's one optimal state of arousal, but I feel like in every endeavor I've ever been involved in, it's about learning the transitions between the arousal states that allows us to pull back a little bit as things, as you said, like get tense, just relax just a little bit to be able to maybe see a different perspective or ratchet up our level of tension or AKA arousal.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3485.669

in order to be able to fine slice the micro expressions of a competitor. I mean, these two cameras on the fronts of our skull and the rest of our brain are really devoted to this process of shrinking or expanding the aperture of our consciousness. And it can be talked about in terms of space, just vision, like tunnel vision versus panoramic vision.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3509.299

It can be talked about at space time, tunnel vision, fine slice, panoramic vision, broader slice. But then when you start getting into like the, then you map that onto the past, present and future mapping. And that's where I feel like we're into the game of skill learning and chess and strategy.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3528.62

So forgive me for the kind of, you know, top contour neuroscience, but that's how I see the human primate as so different than all the other creatures in the world. That's how we're different because we can learn chess or ballet, foil. Gibbons are pretty amazing at what gibbons do. But if they're trying to learn other stuff that they've been failing so far.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3595.03

Right.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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I mean, if I inject you with just a little bit of adrenaline, it stays in your periphery, but it activates systems in your brain in parallel to that. And you're going to experience an immediate dilation of your pupils. you'll have more tunnel vision. I mean, every process is sped up in the direction of higher frame rate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3920.98

Immediately, like, they jump and then they wish they hadn't jumped. Such an important message. You know, we hear all this stuff about suicide prevention and, you know, but just that knowledge. I mean, I don't know how conscious of that sort of thing people are as they're headed down the, the, the trench. I mean, what, um, of, of suicidal depression, but, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3939.366

These apertures that we're talking about, these time-space apertures where frame rate is set and visual aperture is set, I think for most people, we experience them as sort of notches. So it's like you're in a high state of arousal and you have high frame rate. And just like being like a ball bearing down in a trench, you can't really see out the other side.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3960.142

You're literally in there at a certain frame rate of, let's say, an argument, an intense argument with somebody where you want to win and you're frustrated with them and the whole situation and you're in the trench. Whereas when you're relaxed, it's more a broad concave or a flat table where the ball bearing can move around at will.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

3977.316

It sounds like Marcelo and people that train these different transition states as you really learning to access the different frame rates, but from a place of like kind of like a little dimple in a table and then being able to move to the next one as a dimple and kind of moving from dimple to dimple as opposed to like these trenches of brain states.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4000.497

And I think about this a lot, a lot, because I feel like most bad decisions are made from a high frame rate, high arousal state. Most of the terrible things that humans have done to one another... I suppose there's sociopathy and pre-planned things, but they tend to be associated with high arousal states where people regret what they did. All second degree murder, for instance.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4026.053

In any event, I think the ability to move through these different arousal states at will is possible. You asked earlier, like, how would one do that? Well, the beautiful thing about the visual system in these different frame rates and states of arousal is that it works in both directions. So when you're in a higher state of arousal, your visual aperture shrinks, you go to a higher frame rate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4047.296

But it's also true that if you shrink your visual aperture, you go to a higher frame rate. The converse is also true if you deliberately, for instance, as we're looking across one another right now, if I start to take in the fullness of the picture here, the walls, There's a natural relaxation of the autonomic arousal systems or parasympathetic activity goes up.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4067.233

And what's incredible is that anytime we view a horizon, that naturally happens because you're not setting to a single fixation point. So anytime you see a horizon, you relax and it's not a coincidence. So the visual system can drive it inward and your autonomic arousal can drive it toward your visual system.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4087.937

The other thing is there's a really beautiful paper that came out about two years ago, which showed that people who do a biofeedback game where they're watching a little, you know, it's like a more kind of like a sine wave and they're deliberately trying to increase their level of arousal as the curve goes up, for those that are just listening.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4107.306

Within a few days, they can learn to control their pupil size, which sets their arousal and their aperture for a segmenting time. So you can learn this through biofeedback. And I think that the script for that is available online. I haven't tried it yet, but have you ever heard of these yogis that could control their pupil sizes even independently of one another? That's amazing because

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4129.492

It's not supposed to be able to occur, but you can. So you can learn to, you know, I guess the poor man's version of this would be look in the mirror, stare at yourself and try to ramp up your level of autonomic arousal, watch your pupils get bigger, and then try and relax yourself and make them smaller.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4144.8

That practice, it seems in biofeedback, allows people to do it without staring into the mirror, so to speak. So it can be done. It's just that it hasn't been parsed by science that finely until recently.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

415.17

Yeah. Very bizarre. Luckily it was before social media.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4248.157

Why do you think they don't? It takes time and it doesn't seem as intuitive as going out and shooting free throws or something?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4392.796

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4401.764

While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4419.699

Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4440.017

Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4462.205

Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4469.891

I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4488.004

Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. We had a guest on this podcast, Jim Hollis. He's an 84-year-old, probably 85-year-old Jungian analyst on, and he, just brilliant guy.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4512.111

He's written some really important books under Saturn's shadow and And he said, you know, so he has a real kind of like suit up, show up, you know, get to work kind of mentality. But he also is a very reflective person.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4527.312

And he said, you know, if there's one simple key to life, it's that one understand that most of our daily lives, our waking lives are in stimulus response, but that it's so critical to take 10 to 15 minutes each day to just get out of stimulus and response.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4543.664

And either to just let stuff geyser up out of our unconscious, subconscious mind, or to just put some real thought to something that, you know, most everybody is in stimulus response.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4556.534

I wonder these days with social media and so many things filling the space between walking to the car or with the, you know, pro players that you work with, you know, I'm guessing the moment they're on the plane, they're on their phones and texting and All these things are wonderful technologies, but they fill all the space with stimulus response. They fill all the space with stimulus response.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4578.924

And it's not unless you go to a place with no wifi accessibility that you suddenly realize like, wow, like in most of modern life, we're just constantly in this tennis or ping pong match with this trivial thing and that trivial thing. And some of it's essential, but that there's no quote unquote space anymore.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4945.473

Yeah, well, it's as Hollis said, the stimulus response thing dominates. And it dominates, I think, because, well, I have several reflections. First of all, I just have to say, you're absolutely a scientist.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4960.071

You just proved it to us through a description of this process, which I might ask you to describe once again, because I think there's so much value in each of the pieces and how it's put together. Three things come to mind. First of all, yes, indeed, as you know, and listeners of this podcast will know that it is during sleep that we reorganize our

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

4980.973

neural connections and actual neuroplasticity occurs. The stimulus is provided in wakefulness and focus and attention, but the actual rewiring occurs during sleep, deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. One little fun, I think, but also powerful tool that I learned from, maybe you know him as well. I'm blessed to have Rick Rubin as a very good friend. Oh, yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

50.444

and eventually foiling, which is essentially surfing over the water. Josh is not only a high performer, he has now become perhaps the most sought after professional coach in the domains of finance, in the domains of creative endeavors, professional sports, and military. Today's episode is one of my favorite Huberman Lab podcast episodes ever.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5003.978

Rick and I have had beautiful jams. Yeah, wonderful. Such a wise tool. I've been spending more and more time with Rick. But he taught me something extremely valuable, which was the process of taking some time to just lie completely still and let your mind go as wild as it needs to or as calm as it needs to while keeping the body completely still. This mimics rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5027.421

when we're paralyzed and the mind is very, very active. And I actually think that practices such as yoga nidra, non-sleep deep rest are also mimics of rapid eye movement sleep. And there are data starting to emerge now that it mimics rapid eye movement sleep, but in wakefulness. So put simply lying still, relaxing the body as much as possible and letting the mind be extremely active.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5047.864

Rick also taught me a little trick for which I don't know any science, but it certainly seems to work for me, which is that if you wake up from a dream and you want to continue having that dream, keep your body completely still. Whereas if you wake up from a dream and it was a troubling or anxiety-provoking dream, move your body. And it seems to work extremely well.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5065.717

And I have my theories about why this works. I have to ask about this process of of reflecting on one's own mistakes deliberately, kind of addressing one's own pain points or shame points as such a key feature of your upbringing and your practice around learning. Forgive me for going a little bit longer here, but recently somebody taught me something extremely useful.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5093.316

She said, you know, our consciousness is sort of like a lighthouse and we have this beam of light sweeping around 360 degrees. but where we have places of shame about whatever, things that were done to us, things that we've done, whatever, just points of shame, things that we don't want people to know about us, that we don't even like to think about. It's like a stain on that lighthouse.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5118.226

And when that light passes through that stain, it casts a wedge, a shadow in the shape of a wedge. And she described it in somewhat mystical terms. She said, you know, it's through that shadow that evil things enter us. And that the world can hurt us.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5133.945

And that the process of getting over our shame but also experiencing life in much more fullness and being able to cultivate our craft and be more present for ourselves and for others is a process of going right up to that lighthouse window and looking at the stain and going, that's what it is. And that's the process of wiping it off. Now, that's all.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5154.881

That's just an illustration for us to understand what I think is the process you're describing, which is that you get right up next to your worst nightmares, your worst mistakes, the things you don't want to think about. And in doing so, you learn to relax in their presence and they sort of disappear as points of shame.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5543.773

Especially if you become very good very young. I mean, I think this is true of most prodigies. I don't want to name them, but I have a colleague... Very smart guy. His science is very solid. And I remember I met with him and I said, is it true that you're- Jerry's going to love that. That's okay. He's done nice work.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5559.378

I just wouldn't say that it's like transformed our understanding of like everything in that field. But he's made some very important contributions. He's a fabulous teacher and a nice person. But he's said, one day I was meeting with him and I said, you're a child prodigy, I heard. And he said, former child prodigy. And I was like, okay, well, here we're getting technical.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5582.284

But yeah, okay, I think we're – and I asked my dad because he – my dad lived in the same building as Daniel Berenbaum, the musician. It was if you've ever seen the movie Hillary and Jackie. He was one of the world's most accomplished piano players at a very young age. And, um, and my dad used to hear him playing when he was a kid and like, they wouldn't let him play with other kids.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5604.639

And he was like, I mean, Berenbaum is a seer for classical musicians and pianists in particular. It's like serious stuff. And I, so I asked my dad, I was like, what's the deal with this child prodigy thing? And he said, um, yeah, very few of them go on to do much in their adult careers in any field. Right. And I was like, wow. And, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5626.52

Okay, so what's missing there is clearly not a lack of ability, focus. I mean, you could just say raw talent, but you still have to – a kid still has to focus. So what's missing is this transfer of understanding, it seems, or what you're talking about, the interconnectedness of things. And so – Yeah, I probably will get myself in trouble with this colleague.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5648.368

But hey, listen, maybe he'll take on something new and do something additionally spectacular. He's got a lot of things on his plate. But, you know, that struck me. I was like, oh, you know, it's not clear that being a quote unquote child prodigy is such a good thing for the long arc of one's life. But you have seemed to bring in these other elements. Love. I'd like to talk more about that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5673.721

And I would also add, at least from an outsider's perspective of you seem to have broken the mold with like kind of what's expected of you, you know, based on your prior accomplishments.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5806.051

Oh, there's also a tendency to lie. Carol's early papers referred to this in the discussion sections. You have to read deep into those papers. But she describes how the – students who did not have growth mindset that really identified and held so much of their ego with their performance were at a significantly greater tendency to lie about their performance when they didn't do well.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5936.273

Could you give me an example of one such principle? Because I love in biology teaching not names, not using nouns, but instead teaching verbs. Because ultimately, if you want to understand, for instance, how the nervous system works or the immune system, you teach the verb actions of verbs. And the names of the molecules are important if you decide to go into that field professionally.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

5957.252

But otherwise, the principles and verbs are what's most important. So what's an example of a principle of chess or a mode of action on the board that you think transfers?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6076.377

You know what leaps to mind when you made that description, and I didn't follow all of it to memorization, was family feud. I just imagine two families in a feud, right? You get two brothers together, they can do certain things. But you get a brother and sister together, I have a sister, she can do certain things that are powerful and diabolical in ways that two brothers can't.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6096.349

Yeah, so you get two big strong brothers, but maybe one that can't, you know, creep through small places. And so you can map to different, you know, that's sort of more of just kind of an analogy for it all. But I started to immediately think about like, oh, it's like a family feud. If I were to view the pieces as sibling dynamics and parent-sibling-cousin dynamics,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6203.154

I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6216.262

Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6235.093

Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6251.181

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6271.013

It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6291.701

Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. When I think about interconnectedness, I think the word mapping comes to mind. And I define a map of any kind as a transformation of one set of points into another set of points, right? points along the earth transferred onto a page or an electronic map.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6315.118

What's missing from a kind of basic understanding of a transformation of points into another transformation of points are these verb actions, like it's the algorithms, if you will. That's not present in how we map one context onto another context. It requires a lot of thinking to do what you describe. I don't think it's reflexive for most people.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6336.761

to say, watch a game of basketball and think about the emotional dynamics and the consistencies of the emotional dynamics. Last night, I had the great gift of Josh brought me to a Celtics game. So he brought me to a Celtics game and they're playing the Clippers. So I was cheering against the hometown crowd here in Los Angeles, but it was friendly.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6355.639

And you were describing the players and their recent history and the kind of last season, the season. And you said something about the difference between pre-conscious effort and post-conscious effort. Maybe we could talk about that as a gateway into ego. which is like a term that the moment you throw out the word ego, it's like saying sex.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6375.014

It's like people make all sorts of assumptions about what it is and what it isn't. But let's talk about pre-conscious and post-conscious. Because we'll get back to the Celtics and the game that was played last night. By the way, the Celtics won in overtime by a good size margin. So there's something very beautiful

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6394.932

that I think all of us are drawn to as observers, but hopefully everyone gets to experience this at some point in their life as well firsthand, when somebody in art, music, sport, or whatever is just being themselves and this seeming virtuosity comes out. If I think about kind of what Rick Rubin does, a lot of what Rick has done historically is to find artists and work with artists and

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6423.999

just bring out what they're already doing, like the core elements. Like when Beastie Boys started, it was like a joke, he said, and they were kind of making fun of, had wrestling elements and hardcore and punk and all this stuff and hip hop.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6433.846

And, you know, but he tends to work with artists early on when they're in that really like pure state of not thinking about the returns on their investment and all that. And you know, he said many times before to me and publicly that, you know, after people achieve a certain level of fame, it's much harder to get back to that just pure picture of oneself, pre-conscious expression.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6453.824

Just Josh being Josh as an eight-year-old, you just happen to be in Washington Square Park learning chess or, you know, pick any number of different examples. So very different than when people now reflect on their trophies on the wall or their platinum records or the fact that they won and lost or that there's another champion in the house that, you know,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6472.731

that, um, and the real virtuosos seem to be people that, um, can get back to that over and over again. The yo-yo mas, the, you know, um, and people live longer now. So it used to be the, the Mozart's, the box, you know, they could make their contribution and, and then, uh, they died. Yeah. Now we live longer lives. So, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6500.302

People have many more chances, but there's also that longer window for lack of productivity.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6728.203

I heard about this.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6745.039

Exhale, I guess we should save a few lives here or prevent a few deaths rather. Anytime you emphasize the duration or intensity of your exhales, you're going to blow out more carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the trigger for the gas reflex. So yes, you'll be able to hold your breath longer above or below water if you first do cyclic hyperventilation and then a long dump all your air.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6767.657

but never, ever, ever do cyclic hyperventilation, folks, or any long exhale emphasized breathing, even standing in a puddle, because that gasp reflex is the thing that makes you shoot for the surface. And if you don't do that, You feel pretty peaceful until lights out.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6787.077

Or drive a car.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6791.421

Dumping carbon dioxide will let you hold your breath longer, but that's part of the problem.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6819.863

Four and a half minutes.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

6955.868

Yeah, trying to be our previous selves is not a great strategy. Trying to integrate our previous experiences in our current and future selves seems like a good strategy.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7048.151

How important do you think it is to attach language to these things of identity and source of motivation? In other words, let's say, okay, you're working with the Celtics. They won the championship last year. This year they are in a completely different mental frame as a consequence.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7065.499

they're quote unquote dominant in the sense that they hold the crown, they hold the trophy, but they're more vulnerable too because the only place to go from there is either stay or you're going down a notch or more. So do you think it's important for them to create a verbal label for where they're at? Like we're the champs and we're going to hold on to the belt.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7084.57

We're going to hold on to, I realize there's not a belt in basketball, by the way, that they're going to hold on to their status. Or is that the wrong way to think about it? Because the game is played through verbs. It's not played through adjectives.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

71.654

I know as a podcast host, you're not supposed to say that, but it's absolutely true. because not only is Josh Waitzkin so highly accomplished, but he is an exceptional teacher of the learning process. He took what he learned in chess and about learning chess and applied that to martial arts, to foiling, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7389.446

And so hard for people to do. I mean, I think about Michael Jordan and the fact that he wanted to be a pro baseball player. So he had a brief stint at that and it was underwhelming certainly compared to his basketball career. But of course his basketball career was, you know, so spectacular that, you know, the expectation wasn't there. But, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7409.372

Nonetheless, you know, it's so rare to find people that are super successful repeatedly within domain, let alone across domains. It's just. Yeah. Richard Feynman. Yeah. He could paint a little bit and draw a little bit, but I don't know. I've seen those pictures of the roosters. They're kind of first year art school. Yeah. So it's cool. Like, cool.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7432.644

You learn to draw and paint, but he weren't like, if his name wasn't on them, like no one would care.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7572.135

So I feel like there are at least three components to what you're describing. One is that, you know, maybe in this pre-conscious phase, people are thinking about what they have to gain from this process that they're in. And the process is natural, at least to the extent that they're motivated to do it. It comes from some source.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7590.446

This seems to be the stage and the thing that Rick Rubin is trying to tap into in the artists that he works with, whether or not they're established or new, is that it's the identification of that preconscious energy, which is so pure and so beautiful by definition. As opposed to the second thing, which is when people have something to lose, They went from poverty to having a really nice home.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7614.129

They bought their mom a home. They're loving this life. They don't want to lose it. They don't want to go back to where they were before, even though where they were before probably played a key role in that pre-conscious state that allowed them to get to that next level versus something to protect. And trying to not lose everything you've got is very different than trying to protect your

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7637.938

certain elements of what one has. So like in terms of the Celtics, they hold the championship title now. So they have something to lose, frankly. They could not get it again, but it's in the record books. So it's nuanced, right? It's not like in a fight, you can get knocked out or worse, but you're still a champion if you were a champion once. I mean, certain fields are like that.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7673.214

Right. Because then the words like reigning champions, you know, it's like, even though you're already the reigning champion, you know, or you think about dynasties. Like I grew up in the, when the 49ers were like kind of in multiple dynasties, it was like the Joe Montana era and the Steve Young era.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7688.327

And like, you know, like these dynasties where they were just considered such an important team and,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7693.803

overall because of how long they were able to do what they did the bulls right you know um so tiger woods right and there seems to be a kind of obsession with this process at least in the united states where we love to see the rise of somebody from uh you know ignominy to fame or rags to riches and then but there also seems to be this kind of obsession with their fall their demise and then coming back again and i think the the the most um

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7722.887

You know, prominent example of this in my mind is Mike Tyson, whose life is like, as a friend described it, is almost Shakespearean in the way that he came from nothing, then youngest heavyweight champion, then all these issues, you know, legal and financial, then back again. And now he seems to be in kind of...

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7739.582

He's at least of a level of status where he can wear his own shirt and no one thinks it's weird. It actually looks cool. He's probably the only guy who can wear a shirt with his own name on it and it just seems right. Like he earned that one. And I think ironically it was the hangover. It was him pretending to have a – as an actor that kind of brought him back as a lovable character.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7761.157

It's kind of interesting. Like he seems to now be on the Mount Rushmore of famous American athletes who – You know, like, I only wish the best for him. But whatever happens next, like, it's cemented. His legacy is cemented. At some point, people's legacy is cemented. And I wonder how that feels, too.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7782.454

So maybe we could talk about these different stages of the sine wave that hopefully is upward and drifting right.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7832.144

Or your wife is eight months pregnant. Like, how do you feel being, you know, 5,000 miles away right now? That would be pretty benign compared to, right? Yeah. It's like, thanks, you know?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7920.851

Most consistent stimulus for adrenaline release and noradrenaline release in the brain. that is safe if done properly. And you never really habituate. Maybe we'll just really quickly double click on this thing of cold plunging. I don't go for time. I think only in terms of walls of adrenaline. So some days like just getting in the thing is a big wall.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7946.356

I think of it just, for lack of a better word, as a wall. On a hot day, I'm happy to get into the cold plunge. But then what I think is so valuable about cold plunging is that If you start to focus on what neuroscientists call interoception, our perception of everything from our skin inward, you can start to feel the deployment of adrenaline in your body, or at least its effects.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7968.292

And you can say, here's another wall of adrenaline. You watch your frame rate go up, the impulse to stay still, because as you move, you break up that thermal layer, it gets even colder. But then you also want to get out, and then that wall passes. And then you start to notice that the distance between the walls changes. And then playing with that in one's mind as

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

7986.411

You know, when I distract myself, the walls come, you know, suddenly. Or when I'm focused on the walls, they seem like big swells as opposed to when I relax myself, they seem like just like kind of more sharp peaks. And learning that those dynamics of how adrenaline impacts us cognitively and frame rate and all that, I think is an immensely valuable practice.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8009.165

And I can't think of anything else, not sprinting, not lifting weights, You know, not real life arguments because that can be destructive. I can't think of any other kind of venue for exploring one's ability to work through stress and tension than the cold plunge.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8216.579

I don't necessarily. Yeah, same. I'll do cold plunge for one to three minutes. Yeah. And I love contrast with heat. Oh, so beautiful. And I'm very heat tolerant. I love, love, love, love the sauna. Yeah. I don't love the cold, but I love the long arc of dopamine that comes after the cold. I always say no one really enjoys being in the thing. Is there a better sleep hack?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8241.506

Well, there are supplements that can support sleep and that kind of thing. And people learning how to deliberately relax their body can help with transition to sleep and back to sleep. But, you know, one core principle that I haven't really talked about in the podcast is that if you – the more adrenaline nor –

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8256.569

epinephrine, noradrenaline, and dopamine that you experience early in the day, as well as cortisol from bright light exercise, caffeine, and cold, the better you're going to sleep at night. It also sets your circadian rhythm around kind of like a big set of arousal promoting stimuli early in the day.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8274.494

And then, you know, last third of your day, you're very parasympathetic, for lack of a better way to put it. And that eases the transition to sleep. I mean, you know, dimming the lights, parasympathetic, bright lights, Increases the amount of cortisol with your morning cortisol pulse by 50%, 5-0, which is great. Keeps you less susceptible to infection all day, these kinds of things.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8294.77

I mean, we're meant to be in oscillation, obviously, across the 24-hour cycle, but even within the day. It's a little bit tougher when people have evening activities. Like last night, I was watching these guys play a hard game of basketball at 8 to 10 p.m., That's a lot of late night work.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8316.136

Right. So is there a better sleep stack? Not really. I mean, and if you want to increase your rapid eye movement sleep non-pharmacologically, I would say, meaning not exogenous pharmacology. Yeah, the cold plunge in the morning, early part of the day. For evening, anything that moves blood out to your periphery.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8333.519

So sauna, pot shower, that sort of thing is going to drop your core body temperature when you get out. It's a little paradoxical to people, but you warm up to then cool off at the level of core body temperature and it'll ease the transition to sleep. Yeah, it's a wonderful practice. And people who pick at cold plunging, they're like, well, it blocks hypertrophy. Okay, yeah, okay, that's true.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8354.876

So in the six hours after you're trying to get a little more peak on your biceps or something, it's going to block that. But most people have not experienced control over their physiology at the level that comes from doing consistent cold plunging in the early part of the day. warming up and becoming more parasympathetic later in the day.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8374.228

They start to feel a level of control over their mood and energy that's so striking with basically zero cost tools. I agree. Yeah. Sorry to riff on that, but people will probably wonder about specifics. I want to make sure that we talk about two things and you can decide which one to talk about first. One is ego and

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8397.102

And then the second one is earlier you described a set of dynamics across the day and some concrete things about, you know, how one picks the most important question, like what am I working on today?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8409.346

And how to kind of push that into certain portions of the day, how long to do that, and then how to, you know, stay out of stimulus and response and the transition points so that you can make the most of that work or extract the most from that work as you head Into the evening dinner with your family, sleep, and then wake up, repeat. Which one do you think would be most valuable?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8430.489

The game is go wherever you want to go. Where should we go? All right. Before we get practical, let's get a little bit more theoretical and then get back to practical. Ego. The constriction is what comes to mind. The idea that I want to impose my will on something. I want a certain outcome. And if I don't get it, it's going to hurt in some way.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8455.427

There's some punishment mechanism internally like that might drive me to work even harder. It's not always bad. But how do you frame ego? And I will say that the words I am seem very important. Like when people identify as I am the champion, I'm part of a champion team in the NBA. I'm a Celtic, I'm a player, I'm a Celtics player. Clearly I'm not.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8482.336

But when we attach identity to ego, that's also where it seems like it kind of deepens the trench a bit, but maybe it can be more relaxed than the way I'm describing it. How do you think about ego?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8791.36

I mean, and as I walked in here to take a seat at my chair, I got a good hard slap on the back from you. And I was wondering if you were testing me. I thought you last night too. I won't ask what your read of my ego was, but I felt it as a slap of camaraderie. Like, let's do this. It felt great. And I was also thinking about my good friend, Lex Friedman, who is a

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

881.84

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. Every January, I set new goals for the year, and one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8813.364

black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a very intense guy who wears his heart on his sleeve publicly. And people sometimes will take shots at him for that, which really upsets me.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8839.598

Yeah. You guys would have a fun conversation. He, uh, he's going to be jealous that we got a chance to sit down here, but, um, you know, Lex is, uh, at home and with his friends exactly how he appears to be that like all that, that intense, um, self-torture around what to do and how to frame something, who to talk to, how to talk to them. And, um, that's, that's the world he lives in. And, and, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8865.732

But in terms of his physicality, like I think it's hard to understand like just how – I mean like he's like dense like dark matter. You know, like it's the – and I think a lot of guys that roll jujitsu, like you shake their hands and like there's a solidity there that's very different than just muscle. It's like people that are just like –

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8889.704

They're used to being up against bodies, apparently, you know, so it's an experience, you know. These are subtle things, but clearly they matter. And as you've pointed out, one brings them to their professional life. You bring it to friendships. You know, I can't think of many super, quote unquote, solid friends, but Lex is among them. the most solid of them. He's just beautiful. His presence.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

89.703

And from participating in all those endeavors, he was able to distill out the essential elements of learning and how to tailor one's learning process to one's own unique personality and style, flaws and tendency to make mistakes, and how to leverage all of that in order to be able to learn better.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8912.677

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8920.544

And Rick Rubin, you know, we both know Rick and people know Rick as this bearded icon of creativity. And he is indeed that. The fluidity that he moves through life with is just, it's like, it's astonishing. I've spent a lot of time with him and I don't want to like get into my observations of Rick, the Rickisms, if you will.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8942.005

But it's astonishing how much attention and he puts into creating this thing that we're talking about space, like getting out of stimulus and response. I don't think he'd mind me sharing this. It's not uncommon for me to like go over to hang out with him and he'll just say like, hey, like before we like talk, you want to just like do this meditation? And we'll just like sit there and meditate.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8966.391

And you quickly go into a mindset of like, oh my goodness, like this is like a thing. And then, but like, nope, you just get into being present. And then, I don't know, then you hang out and you talk about, if you're us, you know, the Ramones, because we both love the Ramones. Yeah. So I love the way you frame ego. I think that that's very helpful because a physical embodiment of something that is

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

897.108

Since I have Wealthfront, I'll keep that savings in my Wealthfront cash account where I'm able to earn 4% annual percentage yield on my deposits. And you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn 4% APY on your cash from partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

8992.006

largely psychological to most people, at least the concept is very helpful. Do you ever just as a practice, just look at how people walk or how they interact? Oh yeah.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9089.379

What about in non-competitive endeavors like ballet, opera? music where certainly it's competitive in that, you know, you're competing for people's attention, time and money, but you're not, it's not direct competition.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9104.384

Uh, do you spend time working with performers in, in these domains where, um, you know, like just, I heard from someone recently who, uh, she said, you know, I'm a good dancer, but then I went to New York and I discovered that I'm not such a good dancer. Like, like the level of, of who gets to actually dance in some of the premier venues there is like so unbelievably high that, um,

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

912.415

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Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9125.97

And by the way, that shouldn't discourage anyone. That should encourage people. Show them what's possible. Do you work with people like that or is it usually competitive arenas?

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

929.477

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Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9421.174

So pose a hypothesis, isolate variables, test hypothesis, feedback to hypothesis, confirm or deny hypothesis, and just...

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

948.434

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Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9522.864

I love it. It also reflects your clearly repeating pattern of being willing to segment your life into different goals and different pursuits. applying what you've learned previously, learning new things and incorporating those. It brings me back to two things that we touched on earlier.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9541.283

One, that if we don't close the hatch on, we're going to get it from the listeners, which is this paper that we both read. I just want to, or took a look at. Before the paper, let me just say one important thing.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9614.099

And the daily physical interactions with the ocean, with fear, with uncertainty, with just variables that you can't control. And trying to identify what are the variables I can control in this context and work with those to try and tease out new learning. that running those algorithms every day seems absolutely essential.

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9660.323

Well, so it's not my study, but this paper that I sent you, I think is really interesting. It's a paper published in the journal Neuron, very fine journal, excellent paper. We'll post a link to it, but it has many interesting features about, it's really about the study of surprise and the dopamine system, but they use as the experimental context, people watching a game of basketball

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9682.862

And they observed that the reset on sort of the interval timer is essentially said anytime there's been a reversal of which team has the ball. So a drive down court by one team, then the other team. And if there's a rebound and then it switches direction, whatever, it might not switch direction. Basketball provides the perfect dynamic to study this while people are being

Huberman Lab

The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

969.67

For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as the PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9707.512

while there's some detection of brain activity going on. And one of, I think, the most interesting questions about this paper and implications are that just as we can set the aperture of our vision or the frame rate of how well we're clocking time, how finely we're clocking time or how coarsely we're clocking time,

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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There's this big question, which is kind of a philosophical question, really, which is how do we segment time in our life? Earlier, you mentioned that one of the major kind of timestamps, if you will, is a bad event. Like, oh, shit, like the things went completely differently than I would have preferred them to. It could be the death of another. It could be the death of a dream.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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It could be a setback, a reason, whatever. that it marks time. And we just had these fires. I mean, LA will be before and after the fires of 2025. You know, I remember early in 2020, Kobe Bryant dying, right? So these things, I remember the Challenger explosion, like negative events, you know, occupy a certain place in our memory more easily than positive events, but no one will forget

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

9776.451

The birth of their first child or hopefully their second child too if they had a second child or their wedding day, right? These things segment time. You seem to be able to segment your life into a series of pursuits where you cut ties with –

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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practice of something like chess and you take what you learn and move it forward into what seems to be a very different lifestyle and way of being, I think one of the major challenges for a lot of people, it seems, is how to thread the different elements of their life forward in a way that feels contiguous. And I think it's probably true that most people would prefer to not have

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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major losses be necessary in order to segment their life in the most fulfilling way. So how do you think about the segmentation of time? And maybe we'll run this backward from the scale of your lifetime. We don't know how long you'll live, but hopefully a long time.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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That's assumed by way of standard genetics, somewhere in the neighborhood of between 90 and 110, if you take good care of yourself, which you seem to. Sounds good. Okay. And then let's compare that to...

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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how one structures a day, and that will allow us to bring us back to what you talked about before with this most important question dynamic and focus and replenishing and dynamic between conscious and unconscious mind. So when you think about your life, you're 48 years old? Okay, I'm 49, so we're more or less the same point, looking backward anyway.

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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Our lives are very different, but same age, roughly. If you think you're going to live to be about 100, how are you thinking about your timeframe? Are you thinking, okay, here's what I'm going to do for the next five years, 10, I'll allow whatever's happening in my life to dictate what I do next. I mean, how are you running this analysis?

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The Art of Learning & Living Life | Josh Waitzkin

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As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I've recently fallen in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing how to study and learn.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And it is very important anytime you're trying to learn new information. So focus goes with alertness. You can't be focused if you're not alert. This is prerequisite. So you need to be alert and you need to be focused in order to pay attention to the information that you're trying to learn.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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In fact, it is the process of being focused and attending that cues your nervous system that something is important, that something's different about whatever sensory experience you happen to be having when you're focused and attending, whether or not it's the information you're hearing or that you're looking at or both.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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That cue at the level of neurochemicals in your brain and body signals to the neurons, hey, you're going to have to change. You're going to have to alter your connections, either make them stronger or weaker, or a combination of those things in order to make sure that your nervous system can retain and use the information at a future time. So that's step one. And of course, as a part of step one,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Most people, when they hear about optimal studying strategies, they want to know, you know, what should they do? What should they take in order to learn better? Well, here's what everyone should take in order to learn better, which is a great night's sleep the night before limiting your external stress, although some stress is good because it queues up your alertness.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Fortunately, today you will learn the best ways to study. Turns out there's a rich literature on this dating back well over 100 years, and the data are absolutely fascinating and incredibly actionable. It's incredibly interesting how the fields of education, the fields of psychology and the fields of neuroscience have now come together to define the optimal strategies to study and learn.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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It actually allows you to remember certain things better. We'll talk about this a little bit later. No one can remove all stress from their life, but we know one thing for sure, your ability to be alert and focused is going to be greater if you slept well the night before, okay? So sleep is without question the best nootropic, right? The word nootropic means smart drug.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I don't really like that term because learning involves all sorts of things. It's not just about being smart. It's about being able to attend. It's about sometimes being creative, flexible with ideas and information. Here's the point. You're going to need to get your sleep right in order to be able to study and learn at your absolute best.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And I've done many episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast about sleep. We have a newsletter about sleep, the details in a short PDF format, the various things you can do to get your sleep optimized, so to speak. You can find all that hubermanlab.com by putting sleep into the search function.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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We don't have time to discuss that material now, but get your sleep right so that you can be alert and focused when it comes time to learn.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now, the process of being alert and focused on particular material that you want to learn can be enhanced by just having a silent script within your head, silent meaning you're not saying it out loud, where when you sit down to learn, you're looking at a book or you're listening to a lecture, perhaps a podcast like this, you're thinking, okay, I need to learn this, I need to learn this.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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You can voluntarily ramp up your level of focus and alertness by telling yourself that information is important. Don't be a passive participant in learning, this is the basis of active learning, by expecting the information to be so interesting that it pulls your level of attention and focus out of you. Rather, learn to engage your attention and focus voluntarily, volitionally.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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When we hear about ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, we know that people with ADHD can attend very rapidly. They can really pay close attention for long periods of time if they like a given topic or a given experience or activity. They have serious challenges, however, engaging their attention and alertness if they are not excited about an activity or information.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And so it is the hallmark of all good learners to be able to voluntarily force yourself to attend and to focus. And when I say force yourself, that means a constant bringing back of your mind's attention to whatever it is you're trying to learn. It is meant to feel difficult.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I say meant to feel difficult because that strain that you feel, that encouraging, or in some cases, forcing yourself to attend, sometimes even putting on a hoodie and hat, literally putting blinders so that you can only attend to the material right in front of you, that straining that you feel reflects in part

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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the release of neuromodulators like epinephrine, adrenaline in the brain and body, which serve to cue the neural circuits that they need to change at a later time, okay? So the strain that you feel in trying to learn, the strain that you feel in forcing yourself to learn how to focus, that is good.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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That's a cue to your nervous system that it's going to need to change, that neuroplasticity needs to take place. Think about it.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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If you didn't feel that strain and you were able to perform whatever it is that you were doing, or remember whatever information it is that you're being exposed to seamlessly, well, then your nervous system wouldn't have to change because it already has the capabilities within the neural circuits. So that strain that you feel, that agitation is great.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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That's a cue that you are learning or that you've set the learning process in motion. Now, it's also the case that some people don't have great levels of focus and attention. And there are, of course, pharmacologic tools. I would encourage anyone that has clinically diagnosed ADHD to talk to their doctor about whether or not they should use prescription meds and or other methods.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Great sleep is always going to be an important substrate for attention and focus for anybody, but especially for people with ADHD. I highly encourage anyone that's interested in enhancing their levels of focus and attention to also consider the non-pharmacologic approaches. So this is irrespective of whether or not you need pharmacologic approaches. Yes, being well hydrated.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Yes, the appropriate amount of caffeine for you that allows you to be alert, but not shaking and agitated can be very useful.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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However, the scientific data also support the fact that doing a brief, say five to 10 minute mindfulness meditation each day, these are the data from Wendy Suzuki's laboratory at New York University, showing that people who do a 10 minute meditation per day, where they simply sit or lie down, close their eyes, focus on their breathing, their attention invariably drifts, they bring their attention back to their breathing.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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People who do that on a regular basis improve their level of focus. They improve their memory and recall ability. And of course there are a bunch of other positive effects of that simple zero cost tool of mindfulness meditation. So if you're interested in improving your levels of focus and attention for sake of learning,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I highly encourage you to explore the oh so valuable tool of mindfulness meditation, just five or 10 minutes per day done on a regular basis. You miss a day, no big deal, just get right back to it the next day. Does it matter if you do it morning, afternoon, or night? No. Some people find that doing it too late at night might disrupt their sleep.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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But if you think about meditation of the sort that I just described as a perceptual exercise, maybe you don't even call it meditation. You're just teaching yourself to focus. You could even do it with eyes open by focusing on a visual target, allowing yourself to blink. There are good data on this sort of approach as well.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And then just making sure that your visual attention and cognitive attention comes back to that visual target. over and over again. It's a deliberate process of bringing your attention back to a particular location that is very valuable for improving your levels of focus.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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In fact, it is known to create significant improvements in your ability to focus, which is critical for your ability to study and learn. So I know that many people are interested in what to take, what to do at the level of kind of esoteric practices or things to buy. There is stuff out there.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Again, I mentioned hydration, caffeine, great sleep, and so on, but the simple practice of mindfulness meditation or just what I describe as a focusing perceptual exercise of bringing your attention back to the same location over and over again deliberately will train you to train your nervous system to bring your attention back to whatever it is you're trying to learn.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now I've done other podcasts about how to focus about attention specifically and ADHD. Again, you can find all of those at hubermanlab.com. Simply put ADHD or focus or tools for focus into the search function and it will take you to the exact timestamps in those episodes that are relevant.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Right now, however, I want to talk about the second part of neuroplasticity, which is that the actual changes in the nervous system, the strengthening and weakening predominantly of connections between neurons that underlie learning do not occur during the focusing and learning or rather the exposure to the material. but instead during deep sleep and sleep-like states.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need to get sleep, both enough sleep and enough quality sleep.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And again, I've done a lot of podcasts and talked a lot about tools for getting better sleep, but I just want to remind everybody that the actual reordering of the connections, the strengthening of connections between neurons that underlie learning, the weakening of those connections occurs during sleep in particular, during rapid eye movement sleep, which tends to predominate

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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in the latter half of the night. So make sure that you're getting enough sleep for you. For some people it's six hours, for some people it's eight hours. And yes, there is something called the first night effect. The first night effect is the experimentally observed phenomenon whereby information that you learn on a given day

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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is mostly consolidated during the night's sleep that you have on that first night after the learning occurs. Does this mean that if you get a poor night's sleep on the first night after learning something that you are forever going to forget that information, that it cannot be consolidated into your neural circuits? No, however, it's very clear that the first night after learning

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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you want to get the best sleep possible. So if you're learning about, so you're studying is going late into the night and you're drinking a lot of caffeine, be mindful that the sleep that you get after drinking that caffeine late into the day, the all-nighters that you're pulling, those are not serving your learning well. So you need to structure your life as a student of any kind

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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so that you can get focus and attention to what it is you want to learn. And you can get sleep to the best of your ability. And of course, people who are raising young kids or who have stress in their lives for whatever reason, perhaps won't be able to optimize their sleep on that first night or even subsequent nights. But do your best to get your sleep right.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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It's the single best thing you can do for your mental health, for your physical health and for learning and performance of any kind. And it's really worth the effort now. With an understanding of the mechanisms, the focus and alertness and the sleep phase of neuroplasticity, what are some other things that you can do to enhance whatever studying and learning you've obtained?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is that your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order for you to fall and stay deeply asleep. And to wake up feeling refreshed, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I already talked about a tool, a behavioral tool for enhancing focus. What about a behavioral tool for enhancing plasticity? If your sleep is great, or especially if your sleep isn't great. And there, I highly recommend you explore non-sleep deep rest or NSDR. There's a script for this in the show note captions.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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NSDR, sometimes referred to as yoga nidra, although those things are similar but different, is a 10 or 20 minute practice that you can do to restore your mental and physical vigor if you haven't slept enough. So you could do it first thing in the morning when you wake up, if you feel you haven't slept enough. You can do it in the afternoon.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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You can do it in the middle of the night if you're not able to sleep and offset some of the sleep loss that you otherwise would have experienced. NSDR is a very powerful tool in order to enhance neuroplasticity. And I'll talk more about this in a future episode. There's a lot of exciting data coming out about NSDR and yoga nidra.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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But if you're sleeping well, and even if you aren't, I highly encourage you to incorporate a 10 or 20 minute NSDR into your schedule someplace. Again, where you place it in your schedule isn't as important as the fact that you do it in order to enhance neuroplasticity. That is the reordering of connections between neurons to serve the studying and learning that you're doing.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now let's talk about how the best students structure their days. Turns out there are great studies on this. There's a really nice paper In fact, that surveyed close to 700 students. These were medical students, approximately equal number of male and female students, and analyzed the most useful learning habits. That is the learning habits associated with the most successful students.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now, any time you do a study like this where people take surveys, there's always the issue of In fact, we can pretty much set aside any possible causality. For instance, I'm about to tell you that the very best performing students tend to study for about three or four hours per day, but you could easily say, well, they're the best students because they study three or four hours per day.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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They don't study three or four hours per day because they're the best students. And you'd be exactly right, okay? We can get into all sorts of discussions about correlation versus causation, about reverse causality and on and on. However, none of that is the point here.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

176.438

One of the best ways to ensure all of that happens is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And with Eight Sleep, it's very easy to do that. You program the temperature that you want at the beginning, middle, and the end of the night, and that's the temperature that you're going to sleep at. And it will track your sleep.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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The point here is to establish what are the habits that the most successful students seem to incorporate over and over again, regardless of what classes they're taking, regardless of where they are in their arc of their learning trajectory.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And so what we know based on this study, and I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions, is that there are at least 10 study habits that the highly effective students use. I'm going to focus on the top five or six just for sake of time, because it turns out that most of the effect it appears of being a better student can be attributed to these top five or six habits.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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That is, what the scientific data say is the best way to study in order to remember information and to be able to use that information effectively in different areas of your life. So for those of you that are still in school, this could be any stage of school, today's discussion will be very useful for you.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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They set aside time to study. They literally schedule time to study. Now this probably serves several roles. The first one is that they are able to clear out other distractions. And in fact, that's the second thing that they do. They are very effective where they make it a point of putting their phone away and off, of isolating themselves. That's right. They're not studying with other people.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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They study alone, which is not to say that people who study with others cannot be effective in their studying, but the best performing students seem to study alone. They put their phone away. They tell their friends and families that they are not going to be able to be reached during that time.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And yes, they study for three or four hours per day, but they break that up into a couple of different sessions, typically two or three sessions. So they're not doing a three or four hour studying about all in one shot. So they're managing their time, they're eliminating distractions, and they're studying for a consistent amount of time, at least five days per week, okay?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Presumably they're taking some weekends off, although that wasn't made clear from this paper. The other thing that they do, and this is very important, is that they make an effort to then teach their peers, to teach other students in the class. Now, some of you may be thinking,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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and I'm thinking back to college here, mostly, that if you spend all this time learning the information and you are in a competitive scenario with the other students, that teaching them the information is kind of a freebie for them and it's harder for you, meaning you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage or you're giving them an unfair advantage for not having done the work.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Now, while this paper didn't do an analysis of whether or not these students that served as the learners from the other students got an unfair advantage, it's very clear that students who make it a point to learn material in isolation, then bring that material to other students in the same course and teach them perform exceedingly well in comparison to the other students.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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It tells you how much slow wave sleep you're getting, how much rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which is critical. And all of that also helps you dial in the exact parameters you need I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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So don't be afraid to be a teacher of your peers in order to test. This is key to test and develop mastery of the material. Now in my laboratory for years, we used to have a saying, which I simply picked up from the laboratories I was trained in. I didn't come up with the saying, which was watch one, do one, teach one.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And that was referring to doing surgeries or suturing or doing an antibody reaction or a Western blot or things that you do in laboratories. Watch one, do one, teach one. Watch one, do one, teach one, of course, should be reserved to anything where no one's going to be put in danger by the watch one, do one, teach one procedure, right?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Some procedures, especially in laboratories, can be dangerous given the materials you use, et cetera. And of course, today we're talking about learning and studying generally. So provided it's safe, watch one, do one, teach one, is an excellent means to learn, that is to study new material, to develop proficiency and even mastery. and over time, perhaps even virtuosity.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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We'll return to that later, those distinctions. So going back to this idea that the best students set aside time, they designate time to study alone without distractions, that is sure to help them anchor their focus and attention. They know that they're going to need to use their focus and attention during that time. And we know,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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with absolute certainty that focus and attention are a limited but renewable resource in the human brain. The longer you're awake, the more is the buildup of a molecule called adenosine in your brain and body. It makes you sleepy. It makes it harder to focus. When you sleep, adenosine levels are pushed down again. You're able to focus again. You feel more alert.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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You can think of adenosine as limiting your attentional budget, which is not to say that some people don't study best in the afternoon. or in the evening, or even late at night, right? I recall times during university when I'd study between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM. I don't do that any longer,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Scheduling time where you know you're going to need to be focused and attending is perhaps one of the most important things toward being able to focus and attend to the material. Now, if you're taking courses, you probably are going to be a slave to the timing of the courses. You aren't going to be able to tell the instructor, okay, listen, I want you to do this course at 3 p.m.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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because that's when you learn best. or at 8 a.m. because that's when you happen to be able to attend best. However, to the extent that you have any control over the time in which you're going to study, keeping that at a regular time or times, perhaps one block early in the day, one block later in the day, perhaps two blocks early in the day and so on is going to be beneficial.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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It turns out that's also supported by the research literature that The brain, just like with its sleep-wake cycles that entrain to a regular schedule, that is your brain and body get used to being active and inactive at particular times based on your exposure to sunlight, your exposure to activities, your social rhythms, et cetera. If you regularly, meaning for the course of about three days,

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra cover has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and the Pod 4 cover has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop your snoring.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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make it a point to focus and study at particular times. Again, pulling your attention back, it's not an automatic process, but pulling your attention back to a specific location, perhaps on a page or that you're listening to in a lecture.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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your body and brain will start to entrain to that rhythm such that you will be able to focus and attend better simply by virtue of the regularity of the timing of the exposure to the material, okay? So you probably need about two or three days to break into a regular schedule of focusing and attending and studying at a given time or times.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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allow yourself that transition period, but then make it a point to schedule those times to study, set aside your phone, tell people you're going offline, turn off the wifi if you need to or have to, you may need it for your studying, I don't know, depends on what you're studying, but limit distractions at all costs. and learn to just focus on the material. And this is a skill.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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This is the most important thing to understand. It's a skill to be able to focus and study. And it's a skill that you can learn very quickly, especially if you schedule it for regular times and you give yourself two or three days in which to adapt to those schedules and times, and then try and stick to them as regularly as possible.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Perhaps even on the weekends, if you're approaching the end of the quarter or semester, perhaps even on the weekend, even if you're not in the quarter of semester. Keeping those regular times will entrain your nervous system to study and learn at its best at those particular times. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Before I move into specific ways to study in order to maximally offset forgetting, notice I didn't say in order to learn, but rather to maximally offset forgetting, AKA learning, stably learning material.

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If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

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There's one other point that I wanted to pass along from this really nice study on the study habits of highly effective medical students that I've been referring to. And that is when one examined, or these people were asked about their motivation for studying, the best performing students, had an interesting answer.

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They had a very long term understanding of how or belief rather about how their success in medical school would impact their family, how it would impact their life arc, how it would change them. And they weren't particular about the ways in which it would change them or their family. In fact, it was a rather broad, abstract, aspirational way of thinking about their study efforts.

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So what I like so much about this paper is that in addition to having a fairly large sample size, close to 700 students that were evaluated, and yes, it's purely self-report and this kind of thing, nonetheless, it bridges the two extremes of studying and learning.

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It gets right down into the nitty gritty of how long they study, when they study, the things they do to limit distraction that we just discussed, but it also gets to their underlying psychological motivations and the thing that they use in order to pull them forward through their study efforts. perhaps especially when their desire is waning or their level of fatigue is increasing.

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I don't know that I'm speculating here, but this is this aspirational component of going to medical school, which it turns out in the country in which the study was done, only very, very select few of the very best students are able to achieve that. And they have to learn the information in a different language altogether, which is incredible. I always marvel at that.

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I have friends that did their PhD thesis in Italy. They're Italian by birth. They now happen to run a laboratory in Italy. And they had to do their PhD training and write papers and give their thesis dissertation and defense in English, even though English was their second language. So talk about a challenge. And that's just one example that I can think of. There are many examples of that.

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These students that I'm referring to in this study are not necessarily constantly thinking about how their efforts will transform themselves and their families, but they certainly were able to report what it was specifically that they are seeking, what they're aspiring to, besides just trying to do as well as they can getting into and through medical school.

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So the high level aspirational stuff within you, whatever that is for you, it's going to be highly individual, is certainly important and it offers a bookend to the nuts and bolts-y kind of stuff that you're going to do, I would hope, in order to best study and learn the specific material.

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So the specific actions that you're going to take each day to learn specific bits of information that will pull you toward those important aspirations. And now again, if you love the material you're learning, this aspirational component is probably not as important.

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I can recall during university and graduate school and so on thinking, oh my goodness, this is like the coolest thing I've ever heard. I've probably say that about a million different topics. Oh my goodness, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, melatonin, neural circuits, dopamine. I was just awash with excitement about what I was learning.

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BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.

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But of course, sometimes I would take a course where the material was, I don't know if it was more challenging or not, but I had a harder time getting engaged by the material, either by virtue of how it was being taught to me or the material itself. So the ability to attach to some aspirational goal to pull you through can be very valuable. You're not going to love every topic you have to learn.

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However, I will say that at least in my experience, some of the courses that I look back on most fondly are the courses that I struggled with the most. And in fact, that's the basis of the next and easily one of the most important studying tools.

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So a key theme in all of the excellent literature that is the peer reviewed research on how best to study is that studying that feels challenging is the most effective. I know nobody wants to hear this. Everyone wants to hear about flow. Everybody wants to hear about information just sinking into their brain by osmosis. I think it was a Garfield cartoon where he talked about learning by osmosis.

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There's this very cute real world video of a kid in a classroom, I believe, It's in China where he's taking the book and he puts it on his head. Maybe I can find this clip. And he's just kind of like trying to wash it into his brain. It's super cute clip, but guess what? That doesn't work. I mean, it works to put the book on your head. It doesn't work.

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It's not going to get the information into your brain. Perhaps someday there will be ways to rapidly download information into neural circuits. Right now we know, we've known for hundreds, if not thousands of years that Effort is the cornerstone of learning. So I know there are probably some groans about that.

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I know some of you perhaps were hoping that today I was going to tell you how to study so that studying wasn't painful. I think I can accomplish that by the end of today's episode. But in order to do that, let's take another quiz. Okay, so here's the quiz. Again, you can answer these questions in your head.

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You don't have to tell anyone, but you could write them down or say them out loud if you want. The first question is, When during either your states of alertness or sleep does the remodeling of neural connections occur? I like to think this is a pretty easy one. Okay, the answer is during sleep. The second question is what is one behavioral tool that you can use to improve focus

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The answer is simple mindfulness meditation, which I'd prefer you think of simply as a perceptual exercise. So again, just sit or lie down, close your eyes, focus on your breath when your attention drifts, bring your attention back to your breath and so on.

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In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about the issues that are most critical to you. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

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Or if you prefer, you can do this eyes open by focusing on a visual target, either a foot or two feet or three feet away, whatever distance is comfortable for you, allowing yourself to blink as needed, forcing yourself to focus on that visual target for say one to three minutes, maybe even three to five minutes, maybe even 10 minutes. Again, please blink, you don't want your eyes to dry.

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Both those tools will improve your ability to attend, to focus to other material when the time comes, okay? The circuits for focus and attention themselves are subject to neuroplasticity. And then the third question is, can you name or list off in your mind three tools that the most effective students have been shown to use?

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I can think of limiting distraction by virtue of putting away phones and telling others you won't be in contact with them too. And I'm getting these out of order, I realize. is to isolate, to study alone. And the third that I can recall is to teach others in the same course. You can probably think of a few others. Now, why are we taking these silly little quizzes?

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Well, it turns out they're not so silly when one considers that hopefully you'll remember the information from today so that you don't have to listen to it over and over again. but that if ever there was a strongly research supported tool in the literature, in the peer reviewed literature about how students can learn information better, it's testing.

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And I know, I know, I know we think of tests as a way to evaluate our knowledge, but it turns out that testing is one of the best ways to build our knowledge, to retain our knowledge, and again, to offset forgetting. Now, the study of testing as a learning tool, not just as a way to evaluate how much information we've learned, goes back over a hundred years.

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There's a classic study that was done in 1917 where grade school age children read biographies. So they read biographies and then the kids were divided into different groups. One group read and reread and reread those biographies over and over. Another group read the biographies once and then were tested on those biographies.

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But get this, they tested themselves on those biographies simply by having to think about the information that they had read and trying to remember the information. Like what was the biography? Who was the person? Who were they married to? What did they do? When did they go to school? What did they do in school? What did they do in the world? What role did they play in life?

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So they essentially tested their own knowledge simply by going into their own head and asking themselves what they could remember about those biographies. Now, keep in mind here that even though it's fairly apparent that reading a biography two, three, four times might seem more passive than testing oneself on a biography that they had read just once. Right.

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You could imagine that thinking about the biography involves more effort. And indeed it does. But keep in mind also that the kids in the second group were only exposed to the biography once. And yet when you look at the percent of accurate recall of information from those biographies, the children that read the biography once and then

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made a deliberate point to think about that biography in their own mind to effectively test themselves on that material just within their heads over and over. but an equal number of times as the kids that read the biographies directly on a page over and over, vastly outperformed the kids that read the biographies over and over.

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Put differently, reading and rereading material and rereading material is far less effective than reading material and then thinking about that material, testing yourself on that material, forcing yourself to bring that material to mind in your own mind. And this is not just for sake of remembering more volume of material, but also accuracy. of recall of that material.

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And that at least to me was pretty surprising at first until one starts to explore subsequent studies of the role of testing as a learning tool. And then you start to realize that testing yourself is far and away the best tool for studying and learning, not just for evaluating your knowledge, but for actually studying and incorporating that knowledge into your neural circuits.

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Okay, so I realize that anytime I or somebody else talks about a study that was done in 1917, we think of people in these, you know, like wooden shoes and in these schoolhouses that look so different and kids dress so different. Let's get a little more modern here. Keep in mind, however, that the nervous system hasn't really changed much in tens of thousands of years.

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Nonetheless, I think it's nice to think about a more recent study of how best to study. And this study, which by the way, we'll provide a link to in the show note captions, as well as a couple of reviews that include results from similar studies. Again, I'm pointing to a body of research, not just one study here. Looked at whether or not studying material four times, so study, study, study, study,

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It's very time efficient and easy to fit into your busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or looking for parking or sitting in a waiting room. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

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was better in terms of locking that information into people's minds, allowing them to use that information flexibly, which is an element of creativity, essentially giving them mastery of the material, than a different group, which studied once, studied the material twice, studied the material three times, then was tested on the material,

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Or a third group that studied material once, then took one, two, yes, three tests on the material. Now, so what I just described was three groups, all of whom read a passage. This was a passage about animals, about biology, some other topics too in different experiments. Again, three groups, one group studies four times. They study the material one, two, three, four times.

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then later they take a test. The second group studies one, two, three times, takes a test on that material, and then later takes a test. The third group studies the material once, then takes three tests on the material, and then later takes a test. So what's analyzed and compared between these different groups is their performance on that final test, okay? What I put in as the fifth

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because it was, think about it as SSSS, so study, study, study, study, and then later test, or SSST, study, study, study, test, and then later test, or STTT, study, test, test, test, and then later test. So what's compared and contrasted is performance on the test some period of time later. Now, some experiments made that final test of the material

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a couple of days later, other experiments made it a couple of weeks later, other experiments made it much later, months or even a year later, okay? The point here is twofold. First of all, based on everything I've told you thus far, you can probably guess who performed best on the test that occurred some period of time later, okay? Right, the performance on that final test

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was essentially proportional to the number of tests one had already taken on the material. That should be pretty much obvious given the way we've been going today in this description of tests as a way to offset forgetting. So the more tests that you take as a way to expose yourself to the material, the better you're going to perform on that material at some later point.

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Now, of course, at some point you have to be exposed to the material for the first time, right? That's why it's studying and learning.

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But after one exposure to new material, taking more tests on that material, even if you don't perform that well on those tests, as long as you're able to see the accurate answers to those tests and compare your answers to those answers will lead to better performance on the ultimate test and retention of that material at some later time.

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put differently, it's not about how many times you study the material or how many times you're exposed to the material. It's about being exposed to the material, doing your best to focus and attend to that material, and then self-testing yourself on that material. Or as the case may be, if an instructor

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is the one giving you the test, but nonetheless, taking tests on that material, not just once, but ideally two or three times, that's what really locks the material into your neural circuits.

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That's what's going to lead to the most pervasive change, the most durable change, we should say, in your neural circuits that carry that material, that hold that material in your mind, what we call neural encoding, okay? So, The more times you test yourself or that you are tested on material, the better your retention of that material.

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Now, some people will immediately say, well, goodness, what if I learned it and then I'm tested and I'm somehow consolidating the wrong or inaccurate material, but it doesn't appear to be the case. As long as you learn what the correct answers to the tests are, even if you're getting, you know, 40 or 50% or less accurate on those tests that you take immediately after the studying period,

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that's still going to be a better strategy than rereading the material, which ought to be somewhat surprising. It certainly was surprising to me. But you know what's even more surprising and a little scary and that we all should know, and I wish I had learned when I was like in the second grade, is that if you ask students, How confident are you in the material that you just learned?

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How well do you think you would perform on a test? What you see consistently in these studies, I'm chuckling because it's kind of mind blowing, is that the students who studied the material, that is who were exposed to the material four times, think that they are going to perform best on the ultimate exam.

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However, the students that study the material once and then are tested three times on that material, They think that ultimately they're going to perform least well. For instance, they ask them their confidence. How well do you think you would perform on a test of this material in two weeks or in a year or in six months or even tomorrow?

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They report, that is the students in the study, test, test, test group report, much lower confidence in the material, much lower sense of mastery of the material compared to the students that were exposed to the material four times who were saying, yeah, I think I would do pretty well or very well. And guess what? The exact opposite is true.

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And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

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Put differently, when you're exposed to material over and over and over again, you think you've learned the material. In fact, your confidence that you've learned the material increases with each subsequent exposure to the material,

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but actually you haven't learned it at all compared to the people that are exposed to the material and then take tests on the material, oftentimes straining to get the answers right on those tests. In fact, sometimes getting those answers dead wrong and then realizing they get those answers dead wrong, or sometimes they just sense it. But guess what?

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Testing yourself once, twice, maybe three times prior to the ultimate test of your knowledge of that material is far and away the best way to lock that material into those neural circuits. Now I say, I wish I had learned this when I was a student because to some extent I used a self-testing approach. The one most salient example of that is I took a course when I was in college.

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I still remember it was Biosciences 169L, Neuroanatomy Laboratory taught by Ben Reese. He's still there, I believe. And he was known then and I'm sure still now, if he's still teaching as extremely challenging professor, extremely challenging, not as a person, not his personality, but a ton of detail and rigor and high, high, high expectation

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for this laboratory course in neuroanatomy, which involved lectures. It involved in a neuroanatomy textbook where you'd look at essentially panels of different brain sections from different species, different types of stains of different brain tissue. Mind you, this is an undergraduate course.

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And then there was a laboratory component, hence the L in 169L, where you'd have to go from microscope station to microscope station, identifying structures based simply on what you could see down the microscope.

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And therefore, you had to know what the stain was, you know, what was essentially visible to you on the slide, because certain stains reveal certain things like the what we call the cell body of neurons versus the the sort of wires, what we call the axons between neurons, et cetera, et cetera. I remember thinking, this is a really hard course. It was a very difficult course.

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And my mode of studying for the course involved, of course, going to class, doing the dissection. We dissected a sheep brain at that time. So we're literally dissecting an actual brain. We're doing microscope work. We're learning about it from the textbook and from lecture. And there was a ton of new nomenclature about rostral, caudal, dorsal, ventral, all the stuff of neuroanatomy.

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And then at some point I made the decision, perhaps on the basis of sheer overwhelm, to study for neuroanatomy by laying down on my bed in my, studio apartment i lived alone and closing my eyes and flying through the nervous system from different entry points through the ear review my cochlear anatomy through the eye review my retinal anatomy through the dorsal surface of the brain.

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Think about the sulci and gyri, and then the corpus callosum. And I can still see it in my mind's eye. So my process of studying for neuroanatomy, yes, involved exposure to the material, but it involved hours upon hours of thinking about the material within my own mind. So it's a little bit meta unto itself there.

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Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.

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As a consequence, I like to think, in fact, I believe with some confidence that I have a very high mastery of neuroanatomy in different species as well. Now that's my particular area of expertise. I don't think I'm any kind of savant with respect to neuroanatomy. I just spent hours upon hours learning the material and then reviewing the material within my mind.

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So in other words, testing myself, here's what I would do if I were moving down a trajectory of a neural track, for instance, between say the hippocampus and a neighboring structure and I didn't know what was next, I would then go look it up in the textbook and then I'd go back to this mental exercise visualization type studying. It really wasn't studying is the point.

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The point is that I was testing myself. I was trying to find the points in which I no longer had the knowledge to move further through, in this case, my mental image of the brain, but through the material. And this is the key aspect of testing. It's not about just knowing how many things you get right, how many things you get wrong. It's about recognizing exactly what you know and don't know.

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And an important component of testing is running up against those things where you say, I can't remember. I don't know what comes next. Or I'm certain that that structure is the fimbria. And then you go and you look and you go, it's not the fimbria, but guess what? I'll never forget, for instance, the location of the habenula or what it looks like.

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A structure of which, by the way, since these names are kind of esoteric, at that time, we didn't know what it does. It turns out it's involved in disappointment. It's key to the depression circuits or the circuits that underlie depression in some individuals. It is suppressed by viewing of morning sunlight. We know that too.

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And by getting too much artificial light exposure in the middle of the night, you enhance activity of the habenula. Beautiful work not done by my laboratory, but other laboratories demonstrates that.

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So what I just did for you there was hopefully teach you a little something about neuroanatomy and depression, but more importantly, to just illustrate that how you test yourself can be highly individual to the ways in which you learn best.

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However, even if you are not formally enrolled in any kind of school at the moment, today's discussion will also be extremely effective for you to be able to study and learn better information from say the internet or podcasts or any area of your life where you are seeking to learn and use new knowledge.

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Now that contradicts what I said earlier, which is that this notion that people have different learning styles and some people are verbal learners and some people are auditory learners and et cetera, doesn't really hold up so well anymore. which by the way is not to say there isn't any research to support it, it's just that it's heavily contradicted by other research that contradicts that idea.

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So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty You never get tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.

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But your approach, your mode of best testing yourself on material for sake of offsetting the forgetting process and for identifying where you have gaps in your knowledge or where you thought you knew something, but you don't, or you knew something, but it's wrong,

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That can be accomplished through the approach that's best for you, which in my case turned out to be lying down and thinking about the material in my head.

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And still to this day, when I read a paper, I try, I don't always do this, but what I try to do is then take a walk in my yard or outside, and I try and think about the key components of that paper and think about some of the graphs that are especially important, which is what I'm going to do now. I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element.

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Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, so I like to think that we're establishing that testing yourself or testing your students

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or being tested by your teacher is the best way to offset forgetting. Let's look at the literature that actually supports that statement directly, because in the previous experiment I described, it was either study, study, study, study, or study, study, study, test, or study, test, test, test, and then later everybody takes a test at the same time.

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A variance on that was done where they had one group of students study material, so this is new material. And when I say study, I mean, they were exposed to the material for the first time. And I realize this is a little bit of a problem because we're using the word study when, in fact, I'm trying to make the point that testing yourself is studying, okay?

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So forgive me, but this is the way it's mapped out in these experiments and these papers, should you look them up in our show note captions. One group is exposed to the material, what we're called studying, and then takes a test immediately after. they are told what they got right, what they got wrong on that test, and what the correct answers are.

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And then sometime later, after a delay, they take a test of the same material. Another group studies, that is they're exposed to the material, then there's a delay, okay? That delay could be days, it could be weeks. This experiment has been done every which way, it seems by now.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

381.297

I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes, because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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then they're tested, and then there's another delay, and then they take a test at the same time that group one did, okay? So again, it's study, test, long delay, test for group one, or study, delay, test, delay, test for group two. Remember, the final test is taken at the same time by everybody.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Or group three, study, that is they're exposed to the material, then a long, long, long, long delay, then a test, and then the ultimate test, okay? The test that everybody takes at the same time. Can you guess which group performed best?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And the essence of this experiment, if you're listening to this and it's not clear in your mind is you're either exposed to the material and tested very soon after, and then take a test after a delay, say a week or two weeks later, or you're exposed to the material, There's a delay of a few days, then you take a test and then another few days, and then you take a test. So it's more evenly spaced.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3881.313

Or if you were assigned to the third group, you'd study. You're not going to see the material or be tested on it until a day or two before the big test. Then you're tested on it. You get your answers back and then you're tested on it again. You could imagine that the last group might perform best because they're re-exposed to the material. They're told what the correct answers are.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3899.438

So they know what they got wrong. They know what they got right. And then the next day they're taking the test again. I would have thought that group would perform best, but it turns out the opposite is true. It's pretty wild. The best performance comes from being exposed to material, what in this experiment they're called studying.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3916.461

Okay, so they read a passage or they learn some math material or language material or music material or motor learning. Then they take a test very soon after, even same day or next day. And then there's a long delay. And then they take the test. That group performs best. Put differently, test yourself very soon

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3935.106

if not the same day, certainly the next day or so, very soon after being exposed to material for the first time, as opposed to the last group, which performs worst. They perform worse.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3946.189

Being exposed to material, then there's a long period of time, then you're tested on that material, you are told what you got right, what you got wrong, and then the next day you take a test again, even with overlapping questions to the test you took just the day before, and that group performs worst. group that studied, had a gap test, they had a gap test, they performed somewhere in the middle.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

3966.595

What does this tell us? What it tells us is so important vis-a-vis neuroplasticity, vis-a-vis best learning strategies. This is something that, goodness, I wish I had learned when I was in graduate school, when I was an undergraduate, when I was in high school and elementary school. Goodness, even when I was in kindergarten, I wish I had learned this.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Test yourself on the material that you were just exposed to very soon after your first exposure to it, because that offsets the natural forgetting of new material that the brain is exposed to. This is absolutely the hallmark of all the impressive data about testing as a tool for learning. Testing oneself or your students or being tested if you're the student by your teacher

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

400.531

Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. Okay, let's talk about how best to study and learn. And of course, people have different learning styles. Some people prefer to learn by reading. Some people prefer to study in a group. Some people prefer to highlight. Some people call themselves auditory learners. Other people consider themselves visual learners.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4017.068

as a tool not just for evaluating performance, for knowing what you know and don't know, but for consolidating that information in your neural circuits. And when I say consolidating that information in your neural circuits, I realize it's a mouthful, What we know is that this business of putting the testing soon after exposure to new material is about offsetting the forgetting of that material.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4041.588

So you might say, wait, if that's true, how come studying the material and then waiting and then taking two tests right back to back where you're learning the material again during the test, that should be the best performing group. Ah, well, there seems to be something fundamentally different about first exposure to material versus testing yourself on that material.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4059.265

And we don't know exactly what that is. There's some interesting neural imaging data in humans that this has to do something with this notion of familiarity with material. This is very simple. So this is easy to understand, even though it involves a little bit of memory neuroscience nomenclature.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4076.863

Familiarity with something, recognizing it is not the same thing as having agility with that thing, of having mastery of that thing, is not the same thing as having mastery of the material, of having committed it to memory, okay? So when you read something over and over and over, You see it over and over. You hear it over and over. You think about it over and over.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4097.443

Of course, you're reading it or you're hearing about it. And you think that you're learning the material, that your neural circuits are changing, but it's a pretty passive process. Or even if it's a difficult chapter to read or a difficult passage of music,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4113.168

The difference is when you're tested on material, something happens in your performance of or recalling of, if it's just cognitive or you're writing it down or you're told to play the music or do the motor movement, something happens in the error, the getting wrong of certain things that cues your nervous system to lock in the information that you have right and to remember what you have wrong so that you then correct it, which is far and away different than

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4142.225

exposure and re-exposure and re-exposure, okay? So it's a prerequisite to learning that you need to see the material for the first time. You can't just start testing yourself on material that you've never been exposed to. I suppose you could, but you're going to get it, I would imagine, mostly wrong or all wrong.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4158.135

But this business of using testing very soon after first exposure to material as a tool to study, in order to offset forgetting is clearly tapping into this difference between familiarity with something for which we know certain brain areas are activated versus recollection, being able to take that material and bring it to memory, bring it to your focused attention and use that material.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4185.422

I realize this is a bit abstract and some of this is still being parsed. If you're interested in the neuroscience of familiarity with something versus your ability to actually recall something and have mastery of that material, There's a really nice review that I provide a link to in the show note caption. It's published in the journal Hippocampus.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I always chuckle at the fact that there's a journal named after a brain structure. After all, as far as I know, there isn't a journal called Retina or Amygdala. And I have a brief anecdote from graduate school whereby I learned that there was this journal Hippocampus, and it was my first graduate student gathering in graduate school. And the guy who hosted it,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4224.657

Turns out it's a luminary in the field of learning and memory. And I was saying, you know, this is ridiculous. Like there's a journal called Hippocampus. Here I am, first year graduate student. He goes, yeah, there is. And I said, yeah, that's so silly. Like who are the idiots that name a journal after a brain structure?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

423.203

But guess what? When one looks at the research on preferred learning styles, pretty much all of that melts away. It turns out that the best way to study and learn is defined not by the medium in which that material arrives, whether or not it's auditory or visual or combined, whether or not you review slides or a textbook, or you watch small videos.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4240.968

It turns out there's also a journal called Cerebral Cortex and there's probably one about spinal cord. So it turns out I was the idiot saying this. And the guy I was talking to who of course was the host of the party said, yeah, actually that's my journal. I founded the journal Hippocampus. So you can look them up. So at this point, you're going to take a test and it's a super easy test, okay?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4259.019

I realize we're a bit into the material and we're all probably fatiguing a little bit, marveling, I hope, at what an incredible tool testing and in particular self-testing soon after being exposed to new material is. And the question is this, and by the way, this is an open-ended question.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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You're not supposed to know the answer because I haven't told you the answer yet, but I want you to think about this. If one looks at the majority of data in this whole field of testing as a studying tool, how much improvement do you think you get from testing yourself once on new material? Do you think it's a 10% improvement, a 20% improvement?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4301.061

So here I'm just comparing to testing yourself once on material that you were just exposed to for the first time versus not testing yourself at all, okay? How much do you think you improve? The answer is about 50%, five, zero.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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And I can say that on the basis of the fact that in studies of musical learning, of mathematical learning, of language learning, of motor learning, when subjects are exposed to new material and then tested at some period of time later,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4330.134

The percentage of information they get right or that they are able to perform something correctly diminishes over time, especially because they're not doing any practice and no testing in the intervening time. This was built into these experiments. And then you simply ask how much of the material was forgotten if they just were exposed to the material.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4353.347

So in the case of say music learning, this would be, you know, your teacher sits down next to you and shows you the scales on the piano.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4359.807

but then you're not practicing them in between versus, or perhaps another example would be somebody gives you a lecture about a particular phase in history, and then you're not being exposed to the material again, and you're not self-testing versus if you just take one test, even a self-directed test of the material immediately after, irrespective of how well you perform,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4379.645

you have the amount of forgetting, okay? I want you to think about self-testing in this way, because we're thinking about optimal studying strategies. You have the amount of forgetting that would normally occur. This is oh so important. In fact, I don't even know that most neuroscientists think about learning and neuroplasticity this way. Most everybody, including neuroscientists,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4402.037

are taught, were taught, continue to be taught, that you're exposed to new material, you focus, okay, then during sleep, there's remodeling of the connections, all that's true. but we really need to think about how most information that comes into our nervous system each day is forgotten. Most of it is completely discarded.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4418.717

There are some rare clinical deficits where people remember everything, and I'll tell you, these people really struggle in life. They do not do well in work, in relationships. They remember every little detail of everything, and it is incredibly disruptive to their quality of life. It's nothing you want. You want to have a great memory for the right things.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4440.723

So when you self-test material, you have the amount of forgetting that occurs compared to if you're just exposed to the material. I want you to keep that fact in mind because that fact is the one that really hit me upside the head and made me realize, goodness gracious, how I wish that I'd self-tested myself on material that I wanted to remember over time. rather than reading it over and over.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

445.566

It turns out that the best way to study and learn is to access components of your memory systems that offset forgetting. This is a theme I'm going to return to over and over again throughout today's episode.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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I had this elaborate process for studying that I use all through college and graduate school, and it worked pretty well for me, where I'd read and highlight, then I'd write out my notes, then I would write little paragraphs about that stuff. Now, some of that probably mimicked self-testing. Indeed, it had to have. And then, of course, I would take the quizzes and I would go to office hours.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4483.577

Once I got serious about school, I got really serious about school. And of course, I still forget things. I've made errors on this podcast before, in part from going too fast or making a joke that People didn't perceive as a joke. So the whole story there. But in any case, of course, I make errors. Of course, I've forgotten certain things and sometimes I misspeak.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4500.444

I always strive to get things accurately. We correct things in the show note captions. If they're called out to us, we're now using AI to review the podcast and adjust anywhere using insertions or actually replacing those words if we need to and so on and so forth. But yes, we all forget things. We all make errors.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4516.674

But if I had just known that testing myself on material while walking out of class or soon after getting home or later that evening or the next day would allow me to perform so much better on an exam, a midterm or a final exam. And of course I still would have studied because I was committed and you should still study as much as you feel is necessary to get mastery of the material for you.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4540.799

However, if I had known that testing oneself or being tested soon after exposure to material would have the amount of forgetting even out to a year later, I definitely would have saved myself a lot of time.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4553.305

Let's talk about some specifics of ways that you can self-test or if you're a teacher, or if you have good dialogue with your teacher and they are open-minded, perhaps they are open to hearing about what are the best forms of testing oneself as a tool for learning.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4569.915

The best tests are open-ended, short answer, very minimal prompt tests, not unlike the type that we've taken today during this podcast, as compared to multiple choice tests. Multiple choice questions allow for familiarity of names, of facts. It's going to be A, B, C, D, and sometimes E is A and C, and so on and so forth. And within each of those A, B, C, D, E,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

459.714

Rather than think about studying to learn and retain information, I want you to think about studying to offset the natural process of forgetting that everybody experiences when they are exposed to new material of any kind, cognitive or or motor learning, musical learning, math, et cetera. Okay, so keep this in mind throughout today's episode.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4599.691

and you're looking for the right answer, you're looking for the familiarity, the recognition of something. Yes, this, not that. Okay, that's the best answer, you circle C. Okay, this kind of thing, as opposed to an open-ended question where you have to write out your answer, you have to recall the information, right?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4615.853

It requires a much greater degree of mastery of the information than does familiarity or recognition of the material. So the best tests as study tools are going to be open-ended, short answer questions, or even long answer questions. Now there's one exception to this, which are multiple choice tests that include tricks. Okay.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4638.066

If you've ever taken the GRE, the graduate school entrance exam or the LSAT,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4643.16

or the MCAT, there are some questions in there that are very straightforward, but in those standardized tests, they tend to include some quote unquote trick questions in which those questions don't allow you to just recognize the correct answer and distinguish it from the other incorrect answers, but rather they have answers in there that on first blush look like the right answer and people have a tendency to circle those and move on.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4669.178

or to select those and move on. But if you think about the material a little more deeply, it turns out those quote unquote obvious answers are actually the incorrect answers. So there are versions of multiple choice tests where it requires a, greater degree of mastery of the material where simple familiarity won't serve you.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4688.419

And you actually have to be able to recall the different components of information leading into that. But those are a bit more rare, certainly in the context of other kinds of learning, like musical learning. Although I suppose for music theory, that could be relevant. But when I say music learning, I'm just kind of defaulting to the idea of the mechanics of musical learning.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4707.283

But of course there's music theory, et cetera. So what I'm effectively saying is the ultimate exam, the final exam, the midterm exam, the exam that's administered to you, rarely do you have control over the format of that exam. Sometimes it's mixed format, but the different ways in which you self-test as a form of studying are really key. And ideally you would make these open-ended.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4729.194

In other words, you would not simply rely on multiple choice. You would rely on a form of self-testing or that you give your students or that your teacher gives you that requires you to think about the material with some degree of depth, with some degree of effort. And of course, you're going to get certain things wrong.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4745.423

Now, I would hope that if testing is being used as a learning tool, as opposed to just for evaluation, but here we're talking about using testing as a learning tool, that it wouldn't impact at least not at that moment, your final performance in the course or whatever it is. Rather, it is testing for sake of learning. Now, we know from the literature that students don't like pop quizzes.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4771.166

I gave you a few today and forgive me. They don't like pop quizzes. And we know this in the form of, the reduction in teaching evaluation scores, okay? Having received teaching evaluation scores of different, let's say values over the years. And I always take the feedback seriously.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4789.794

One salient comment that just leapt into my mind was the fact that I ended up mentioning my bulldog Costello too often in class. So here I'm mentioning him again, just to get back at that one student that said I mentioned him too much. I mentioned him as much as I want. The point here is that When students evaluate their teachers, they tend to punish their teachers for pop quizzes.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4809.995

Does that mean pop quizzes aren't effective? No, but you know what's more effective? Telling students at the outset of class or telling yourself at the outset of any kind of learning expedition, because this isn't just about the classroom, that you're going to take a bunch of exams, that you're going to use testing or quizzes, whatever you want to call them as a form of teaching and learning.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

481.365

The best way to learn is to think about offsetting the natural forgetting of new information. You're trying to inoculate against forgetting. That is the way to remember things. That is the way to gain mastery over them. And I'm going to teach you how to best do that using the data gleaned from the peer-reviewed literature. Now, before I do that, I want to talk about what learning is.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4832.11

And that you can expect five tests or five quizzes during the course of being presented the material, or that you are going to test yourself every day after the material. Now, sometimes you have to go from one class to the next class. There isn't an opportunity to test yourself, but guess what's not going to be helpful? Walking out of class and getting immediately onto your phone.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4849.838

We know that that probably inhibits your ability to remember the material because it's going to enhance forgetting because you do have this key opportunity right after being exposed to new material to help offset the forgetting by testing yourself on that material as soon as possible after being exposed to it.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4866.615

So again, even though I did not attend school in an era where we had smartphones and texting, I recall walking out of class and just walking out of class and going to my bicycle, but Of course, there were people to talk to, there were other things to attend to.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4883.405

If you're really serious about learning material, take a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes after being exposed to that material and think about that material, test yourself on it. And if you find that you don't know the material, you're confused by it or overwhelmed by it, great. You just accomplished the first step in cueing your nervous system to the fact that it needs to learn that material

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4903.177

and you've created an opportunity for enhanced neuroplasticity, which is really what all of this stuff about testing as a form of studying is about. You're going to test yourself so that you figure out what you don't know, so that you then look up that material, test yourself on it again, so that ultimately you forget Very little of it, if any.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4923.767

Now there are other components to learning a neuroplasticity that I've talked about on previous podcasts that are just too interesting not to mention, but I'm just going to mention them in brief, things like gap effects. Gap effects are oh so cool and they've been demonstrated for lots of different forms of learning. Gap effects are what I just did, which is to take periodic pauses,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4943.763

in the learning of material as short as five to 10 seconds, but even as long as 30 seconds during which, guess what? Your hippocampus, the neurons in your hippocampus repeat information that you've been exposed to for the first time at a rate 20 to 30 times faster than typical, just as it does during rapid eye movement sleep. So if you are a teacher and or if you are a learner,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4970.06

periodically throughout an episode, a class or whatever of trying to learn new motor skills or music skills or whatever kind of learning pause and let your hippocampus generate more repetitions of that material than it would otherwise if you just tried to barrel through.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

4986.405

So I realize as we've gone through today's discussion that words like test and quiz, evaluation, offsetting forgetting, all of that stuff can spike people's cortisol. It can give us flashbacks to uncomfortable classroom experiences related to being called on, cold called for the answer. a vicious trick that instructors play.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5007.801

Keep in mind that testing as a form of studying, whether or not self-directed or given to you by a teacher is not for sake of evaluation at the level of, okay, you know, you get an exam at the end of a lecture and then you do your best to answer those questions and then you turn it in and it impacts your grade. No, this is about being told or revealing to yourself how much you know and don't know.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5033.911

And then of course being told the correct answers so that you can compare your answers to the correct answers and doing this frequently and ideally very soon after being exposed to the material. That's one of the key things that I keep coming back to again and again here, because it's something that frankly was not done while I was in school. for whatever reason.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

504.998

I promise to make this fairly brief because I've covered learning and so-called neuroplasticity before on this podcast. For those of you that have heard those discussions, this will serve as a refresher. For those of you that have not heard those discussions, this will be thorough enough for you to be able to digest all the rest of today's information.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5053.477

And I think that's largely because when people hear the word testing, they think of evaluation. And if anything, at least in the United States, over the last 30 years, but in particular over the last 15 years, there's been this tendency to shift away from formal evaluation. I personally believe that one can learn in many different styles and many different contexts.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5073.886

I, of course, as a university professor, believe that for certain topics, in particular science and medicine and health, but other topics as well, of course, that formal rigorous coursework is by far the best way to learn information for me.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5088.238

But that regardless of whether or not you're learning just from YouTube or you're learning from podcasts or you're learning from books or you're learning from the school of life, as it were, from experience that testing as a form of studying is absolutely key. And gosh, there's such a beautiful body of research.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5106.4

In fact, I'll link to several studies, including a review entitled, Testing Enhances Learning, a review of the literature, as well as a beautiful article, Test Enhanced Learning, which gets into this. And there's a wonderful book about this that I'll also provide a link to in the show note captions.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5121.991

all of course, authored by researchers who have worked squarely in this field and compare the data on testing as a studying tool to other forms of studying and learning. So it's a really impressive literature that I do believe we all should have known about. And that's why I'm passing it on to you now.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5139.742

Now, before we wrap up, I want to make sure that I emphasize some of the other key components to studying and learning that have nothing to do with testing as a studying tool. And those are the role of emotion, the role of story, and the role of what's called interleaving. Now, in terms of emotion, I think we all inherently understand that more emotionally-laden experiences

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5164.935

are remembered more durably. We tend not to forget them. In fact, this is the basis of things like PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. It is the reality that one trial learning that is exposure to something and never forgetting it occurs very readily when the thing that we're exposed to is negative or has a very heavy negative emotional salience.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5188.744

So it could be something we read or something we see, Sometimes it's something that happens to us. I don't like the idea of that, but this is true. Your nervous system is wired such, neuroplasticity is such that stressful experiences, because they deploy such massive amounts of adrenaline, epinephrine, as well as other neuromodulators,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5212.327

allow very quickly for the milieu, the environment of the neural circuits that led up to that experience to strengthen their connections with one trial, so-called one trial learning. This is why, sadly, although at the same time from an adaptive perspective, we say, fortunately, if you were to step outside today and God forbid, see somebody get hit by a car, you would remember that.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

523.399

Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of your nervous system, which of course includes your brain and your spinal cord, which is the ability for your nervous system to change in response to experience. So any form of learning involves neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, we sometimes hear as neuroplasticity, two words, or neuroplasticity. Those are the same thing, essentially.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5238.206

Chances are you would remember that forever. Now, that does not mean that the emotional components of that memory necessarily going to stay within you.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5247.449

There are tools for the treatment of PTSD, such as the different ones that come to mind are, you know, systematic exposure therapy, where you're re-exposed to that idea or memory, sometimes even circumstance with of course the support of a trained professional, typically a psychiatrist or psychologist. And the emotional load of that experience is gradually

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5273.231

uncoupled from your memory of the experience. There's things like EMDR, there are pharmacologic approaches. Some of these are combined with the sorts of things I've described. I've done entire episodes about stress and PTSD. Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com by putting stress PTSD into the search function.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5289.361

However, we know that it is the same neuromodulators, mainly epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed at massive amounts in those moments where something very stressful happens that allows the neural circuits that led up to the circumstance, as well as the neural circuits that encode that visual scene and scenes like it, or sounds like it to be locked in and linked to the stress response.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5313.308

Now, what this is really all saying is that negative stuff is remembered typically the first time and every time and very durably over time. as compared to positive experiences, which as far as peak experiences go, right, birth of your first child, a wedding, a wonderful professional or personal experience, those two can be one trial, learning and memory.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5338.171

But most things that we are exposed to are not at those extremes, either negative or positive. However, we know that any kind of story, any kind of emotional emphasis on material, either in the delivery of that material, but certainly in the way that that material is perceived by you, like getting really excited about something you want to learn, or thinking something's really awful,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5361.952

is likely to be more readily and stably committed to your memory. And that's because of these neuromodulators like epinephrine and norepinephrine, but other neuromodulators as well, that wire those experiences into your neural circuits. Again, these neuromodulators, epinephrine, norepinephrine, we also hear about acetylcholine, dopamine, et cetera,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5380.543

They can operate at low levels and sort of background levels. They can create subtle fluctuations in mood, focus, and attention, or they can create massive shifts in mood, focus, and attention, depending on their levels, their timing, and much, much more.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5395.792

The point here is that if you're a teacher and or if you are a learner, paying attention to your internal state as you're trying to learn is very key. We've all had that teacher, that lecturer that just kind of drones things out and monotone.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5409.886

If you need to learn the material coming out of a source like that, person or otherwise, you're going to have to ramp up your level of internal attention consciously in order to bring about some emotional salience, some intensity to the way it's perceived. And you can do that just through your own thinking.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5427.074

as opposed to the situation where you have a super dynamic teacher who's telling you things with wide eyes and perhaps even cracking jokes. By the way, the teachers that crack jokes get lower teacher evaluations than those that don't crack jokes or swear. Did you know that? Teachers that crack jokes and swear, they're perceived as more likable, but they get lower overall evaluations typically.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5446.581

They're seen as less professional and therefore less good teachers by their students. That's why I try not to make too many jokes or swear in my lectures. The point being that We all have those really wonderful dynamic teachers. Yes, it's much easier to learn and remember that material.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5464.53

You still need to test yourself on it, but it's much easier to learn that material for the very reasons I stated before. It's a lesser example of more deployment of the neuromodulators in you, the learner, that is exposed to that material, okay?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

547.486

The change that underlies neuroplasticity at the level of cells, which we call neurons or nerve cells, generally involves three different mechanisms. One is the strengthening of certain connections, what we call synaptic connections. Synapses are the location between neurons where they communicate with one another. It's actually a gap between the neurons. is technically called the synaptic cleft.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5478.358

So emotion matters, so much so that in a beautiful review about learning and memory from the great James McGaugh, one of the luminaries in modern neuroscience and psychology of memory, He talked about a medieval practice, this is pretty wild, whereby people and kids, kids are people of course, but adults and kids were taught information and then thrown, literally thrown into cold water. Why?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5503.927

To deploy adrenaline and consolidate memory of the material they were exposed to. Now, I know we've covered deliberate cold exposure on this podcast before. No, I'm not saying you need to do a cold plunge after being exposed to new material, but guess what?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5517.89

They were doing that many hundreds of years ago and it makes sense logically based on all our understanding of the neurobiology underlying things like PTSD, underlying emotion-laden memory formation and consolidation and our ability to remember things that were emotionally laden much better than things that were less emotionally laden.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5537.795

So if you want to take a cold shower after learning some material or even better testing yourself mentally on that material, while in a cold shower or cold plunge, you certainly can. Just don't stay in there too long. Use best practices. If you want to know what those best practices are for deliberate cold exposure, you can check out our deliberate cold exposure newsletter at hubermanlab.com.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5557.822

It's completely zero cost. You don't even need to sign up. You simply go to newsletter in the menu tab and you can find that PDF. And now, because you are becoming proficient in an understanding of neuroplasticity and learning and testing and neuromodulators like epinephrine, yes, drinking caffeine will increase your levels of epinephrine.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5575.262

Not strikingly so, but enough that it probably helps you learn things a little bit better. Should you drink the coffee after? Listen, that's getting a little bit too down in the details. The most important components to learning are that you be alert so that you can attend, so you can pay attention to the material you're trying to learn and then testing yourself later.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5593.866

And of course the other component, which is getting sufficient amounts of great sleep each night. And I highly recommend doing NSDR. I mentioned gap effects before. Those are very, very cool. I just used another one now. And the final tool for studying that I believe is not discussed enough and is a bit counterintuitive.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

56.041

Now, one of the most important things that you're going to learn today is that learning, that is the best learning practices are not intuitive. So before we dive in, keep in mind that whatever you believe about how best to learn for you is probably incorrect.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5613.712

So it's a fun one to just mention and that perhaps you can explore in your own studying and learning adventures is interleaving of information. This one's kind of wild, actually. It turns out that if your instructor or you takes information about something that they're trying to teach you or you're trying to learn, maybe it's piano, maybe it's neuroscience, maybe it's how to learn better.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5637.195

And every once in a while throws in a little anecdote about something, let's just say, or mention something about the Olympics or incorporate something that seems pseudo random because it's not actually related to the material you're trying to learn.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5653.645

Turns out that that acts not as a gap in the same sense that gap effects, which are times in which you do nothing in order to get more repetitions of the material that you just heard in your hippocampus, but rather those breaks of interleaving information, not just getting a steady barrage, like drinking from a fire hose of new information from start to finish,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5674.292

turn out to enhance overall learning ability. Probably, we think, at a mechanistic level, because the neural circuits are able to generate more repetition, similar to gap effects. But actually, in a very interesting way, also because,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

569.773

It's a gap. And within that gap, chemicals are passed across that gap that allow one neuron to activate other neurons or many neurons to activate many other neurons or to inhibit the activity of other neurons. Okay. One form of neuroplasticity is the strengthening of connections between neurons. Another form of neuroplasticity is the weakening of connections between neurons.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5691.414

by injecting other information that seems totally unrelated, random or pseudo random, it allows the brain areas that are responsible for encoding information to take whatever new information you're learning and to incorporate it with existing knowledge or even distantly related knowledge. So does this mean that you should learn math and history in the same lecture?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5712.97

Well, I think that might be a bit overwhelming, kind of like drinking from two fire hoses. Here we're talking about interleaving challenging information that's new to you

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5721.076

with little anecdotes, little bits of information that perhaps are new to you but don't require a lot of challenge, which is, of course, why every once in a while I throw in a little anecdote about my bulldog or learning neuroanatomy or something of that sort.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5734.847

It's not just to provide a break, it's to provide examples that are related, but not central to the material that we've been talking about today, which is all about how to study and learn optimally. Okay, so I realize that many of you are not students any longer, although some of you are, but in many ways, we are all students.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5753.426

We are all constantly being exposed to all sorts of information out in the world. Goodness knows. Thank goodness we don't remember it all. But there is, of course, information that we would like to remember, that we would really like to consolidate in our memory and be able to have some mastery over.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5770.416

Earlier, I said I would distinguish between unskilled, skilled mastery and virtuosity, and I'll do that now. Unskilled, of course, means that we have limited understanding, let alone ability to use information. Skilled typically means we know and can recognize and use information. in basic ways or even advanced ways.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5787.973

Mastery typically means that we have close to the full depth of knowledge in a given area and that we can use it pretty flexibly. And virtuosity, at least my definition of virtuosity is where we actually have such mastery of material

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5802.909

that we can use it in ways that we still don't even know how we can use, meaning that we can inject elements or we even invite elements of uncertainty and kind of spontaneity into the use of that material. Here, I'm thinking of great musicians, I'm thinking of great athletes where,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5819.296

They know all the plays, they know all the moves, it's all scripted into their nervous system and they can deploy those at any time.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5823.959

So they have real mastery, but in order to display their incredible abilities, their virtuosity, they actively invite in the X factor, the uncertainty such that sometimes they find themselves playing their instrument or singing or performing athletically or mathematically or what have you in ways that even surprise them. And that of course is a lot to expect of ourselves.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5848.851

I think most of us would be content to have skill and mastery of the things that we care about. And you know, should we achieve virtuosity, then wonderful.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5858.775

But one of the main points of today's discussion was to arm you with an understanding of neuroplasticity in the context of studying and learning, to really understand that so much of learning stably and consolidating information over time is to offset the forgetting process.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5874.082

And that testing is not just a tool for evaluating our knowledge, but rather a tool for evaluating and reinforcing and building our knowledge. Put differently, that testing is an excellent tool, if not the best tool for studying. And I think that's an important reframe that others have brought about and that I really want to highlight, underline and boldface during today's discussion.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5897.409

It's one that I certainly wish I had applied more in my educational trajectory. And it's one that I plan to deploy further in my seeking out of new knowledge in terms of the podcast and neuroscience, but in other areas of my life as well, because from the existing literature and hopefully from the way it was presented to you today, you probably realize that it is near infinite, if not infinite,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5921.567

that we can apply testing as a tool for studying, self-testing, testing of others, using testing as a way to really probe what we know and don't know and to really offset that forgetting process. And in that sense, it is really nicely aligned with what we know about neuroplasticity. And it's also something that we can use freely and that you can use covertly

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

594.091

And yet a third form of plasticity, which is often discussed in the media, but is very rare actually, in the nervous system, especially the adult nervous system of humans, is neurogenesis, or the addition of new neurons.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5943.243

that you can apply in your own seeking out of knowledge and new skills of all kinds, classroom or otherwise. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Another terrific zero cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5961.977

And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5980.81

I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

5999.281

to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

6022.307

If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

6041.718

Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, our Neural Network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter. that has protocols, which are one to three page PDFs that describe things like optimizing your sleep, how to optimize your dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

6060.572

We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes resistance training, sets and reps, and all of that, as well as cardiovascular training that's supported by the scientific research. And we have protocols related to neuroplasticity and learning.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

6073.083

Again, you can find all that at completely zero cost by going to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the right corner, scroll down to newsletter, you put in your email, and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about how to study and learn. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

608.917

Let's just get this out of the way upfront because the addition of new neurons, again, grabs so much attention in media articles, but it's responsible for a near trivial amount of the sort of neuroplasticity that is important for today's discussion, or frankly, for most all discussions.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

624.64

It is true you have a specialized set of neurons in your olfactory bulb that are responsible for smell, as well as a specialized set of neurons in the so-called dentate gyrus of your hippocampus, an area of the brain that's important for memory, in which new neurons appear to be added throughout the lifespan. But this is not the major mechanism by which learning and memory occurs in humans.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

645.786

Rather, the major mechanism by which learning and memory occurs in humans is the strengthening of existing connections and the weakening of existing connections or the formation of new connections between already existing neurons, not new neurons, okay?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

663.243

Now, the removal or weakening of connections between neurons being an important component of neuroplasticity is very important for sake of today's discussion. I want to emphasize that when we hear about weakening of connections, we often think, well, that means forgetting, or that means the brain is getting less good.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

680.072

However, so much of the neuroplasticity that underlies, for instance, the acquisition of a new motor skill is actually the reflection of removal of connections. So we don't want to project any kind of value onto a discussion about adding new connections, removing new connections. Let's just leave it at this level mechanistically.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

701.422

When you hear about neuroplasticity, just know that it could be the consequence of strengthening of connections as well as weakening of connections. and that neither strengthening of connections in the nervous system nor weakening of connections can map directly to the formation or removal of say memories or information. Just know that these are the important mechanisms.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

723.947

In fact, if you look at a baby, that is let's say, I don't know, nine months old, their motor skills are not terrific typically compared to the motor skills that that child will have when they are six or seven years old. Just look at a kid trying to eat spaghetti or something of that sort or eat anything when they're a small baby versus a toddler versus a young child versus

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

73.835

And I confess this was humbling for me as well when I started to dive into this literature, because as somebody who was a student for many years and in some sense still considers himself a student of science, and health information because of this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

745.751

an adolescent or teen, despite the poor table manners of some adolescents and teens and some adults for that matter, they are still exhibiting far more precise motor movements than they did as an infant, of course. And believe it or not,

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

761.912

The improvement in motor coordination that one observes in humans and other species for that matter, from birth until the adolescence and teen years and adult years is largely the reflection of the removal, that's right, the removal of as opposed to the formation of neural connections. However, the neural connections that remain become much more robust. They become much more reliable, okay?

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

786.397

So that's the mechanistic backdrop for everything that we're going to talk about today, which is how to study and learn. And as I mentioned earlier in my introduction, most of learning and remembering new material is about offsetting the forgetting process that naturally occurs anytime we hear new information.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

805.279

So in keeping with what will ultimately reveal itself to be the dominant theme of today's discussion right now, and for reasons that will become clear later, I want you to take a brief quiz. Now, the moment people hear quiz or test, typically it spikes their adrenaline, they start feeling stressed, but don't worry, you're going to keep your answers to yourself.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

827.127

And you're doing this for a very specific purpose. Here's my question. This is a two question quiz. How many different ways mechanistically speaking does neuroplasticity occur? Is it one mechanism, two mechanisms or three mechanisms? Or is it four or five? Okay, can you name in your head two of the three major changes that the nervous system can undergo which are reflective of neuroplasticity?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

861.817

Okay, so the answer to question was, is that there are three different modes of neuroplasticity, as you recall, or as you may not have been able to recall. And by the way, if you were not able to recall the three different modes of neuroplasticity or mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity, that is fine.

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

87.887

And certainly as somebody who still teaches university courses, both to medical students and graduate students and to undergraduate students at Stanford, I thought I understood the whole teaching and learning process, but I too learned that it is anything but intuitive. In fact, most of what we believe about the best ways to study, are absolutely false.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

877.543

As you'll soon realize, recognizing the errors in your information retention is another critical and very useful way to retain more information, even if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know. In fact, especially if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

895.436

So the three ways are the strengthening of neural connections, second, the weakening of neural connections, and third, through neurogenesis, the addition of new neurons. Why did I provide this quiz? Why did I test you?

Huberman Lab

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

907.583

Well, as you'll soon learn, if you look across the total body of research on how best to study and learn, it involves doing exactly what we just did, which is to periodically stop and test yourself on the material that you learned. Testing is not just a way of evaluating what knowledge you've acquired and which knowledge you have not managed to acquire.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

930.194

It also turns out to be the best tool for offsetting forgetting of any kind. And I'll go into the data that supports that statement in a moment. So yes, today we're going to get a little bit meta in the sense that we're going to be learning about optimal studying strategies and applying those as we go through this podcast.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

947.924

And no, there will not be a test at the end, although you're welcome to give yourself a test at the end. I'm going to provide you with an excellent zero cost, very fast tool that you can use to evaluate your knowledge and your ability to study and learn better as a consequence of having listened to this podcast versus had you not listened to this podcast.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

965.717

So if ever there was an incentive to listen to the end, There it is. Okay, let's talk about some of the other practical aspects of studying and learning. I know a lot of you out there who want to learn and want to come up with the best studying strategies are trying to think about how to structure your day or how much to study or when to study.

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Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

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Let's get the most important things out of the way first. Neuroplasticity and learning, that is converting your studying efforts into retention of knowledge is a two-step process. You've probably heard about active engagement. That's just a fancy set of words for focus, for really attending to the information that you're trying to learn.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stacey Whitman. Dr. Stacey Whitman is a functional dentist with expertise treating both adult and pediatric patients.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10014.582

Great. Soft toothbrush. Be gentle. Avoid alcohol-containing mouthwashes for all sorts of reasons. Mm-hmm. Pay attention to the fluoride debate.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10030.94

Great. I love these hydroxyapatite toothpastes. Yours and Gator Dentist's one. Love them. I don't get paid a dime for it. I pay my own money for them. I really love them. My teeth are so much healthier now. I just like them too. I like that I can... They taste good. I don't actually rinse afterwards. We didn't talk about that, but ideally you don't rinse after you brush.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10087.395

Avoid nicotine.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10090.056

And alcohol. Hydrate well.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10092.738

Electrolytes. Electrolytes. Keep your saliva abundant.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10098.621

Especially for older people. Yes. Yeah. The nasal breathing during sleep, we can double-click on that one because that's going to get your sleep right.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10116.854

trying to think here if there's anything I missed.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10209.65

Thank you so much for this really extensive and exceptionally clear voyage through oral health. I am sure that people are going to take away many, many things that are actionable. And I really appreciate that you've been such a strong advocate for oral

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10228.854

pointing out that oral health is not just about teeth, it's not just about breath, it's about that, but it's also about your whole digestive tract and about brain health and about heart health. And we have a lot of control over this particular aspect of our body, as opposed to like heart health, which we have to get to indirectly unless we're a heart surgeon.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10248.059

Or gut health, which we have to get to indirectly unless we're gastroenterologists, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10273.407

Well, I absolutely love the work that you're doing. I couldn't think of a better person to bring on here to educate us all. And like I said, you've given us so many valuable tools and we will provide links to all the incredible resources that you're continuing to put out into the world. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for coming here.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10289.36

Thanks for, it's clear that this is a labor of love for you. It's not just about like cleaning teeth or something. So yeah, that you're, people probably can't see, well, certainly if they're listening, they can't see the incredible extensive notes that Dr. Whitman brought with her and her incredible handwriting. Goodness gracious, what beautiful handwriting.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10313.827

No, they're notoriously have bad handwriting, but yours is certainly offset whatever. failures of handwriting the other physicians have.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10323.551

Thanks. Well, we'll do it again. And I'm really grateful for you coming on here today. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10330.336

Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. I hope you found it to be as interesting and useful as I did. To find links to Dr. Whitman's work and the various resources we discussed, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10349.32

In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10367.711

If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10385.405

This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10405.097

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10426.455

And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10439.767

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

10456.551

We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I see. So for people that aren't familiar with pH, it's a measure of how alkaline or acidic a given environment or something is. And so what you're telling me is that fluoride makes teeth ultra strong. It's not a mineral that teeth normally see.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Like if a child never used fluoridated toothpaste or drank fluoridated water, they basically, unless they happen to drink from a stream with fluoride in it, their teeth would rely on hydroxyapatite to remineralize. But we put fluoride into toothpaste and into water and that allows teeth to become even stronger and even more acid resistant.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Whitman. Dr. Stacey Whitman, welcome.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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What are the times in each 24-hour cycle when our teeth are repairing themselves? So like in the middle of the night, provided somebody's asleep, they're not eating. They're not drinking unless they get up for a moment and have a sip of water or something. In between meals, they're not eating.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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If I just sort of naturally intermittent fast, I generally eat my first bite of food somewhere around 11 a.m., sometimes a little earlier. But But that's just habit that sort of falls under this intermittent fasting kind of thing. So I and many people have stretches of time of anywhere from three to 14 hours when we're not ingesting any food or caloric beverages.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Is that when remineralization occurs?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Remineralization. We'll have to do it.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Oh, that's right. You put the accent. Remineralization.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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You said that before. Yes. Thank you. Is that when our teeth repair themselves?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I'm super excited to talk about oral health from all perspectives. Your public-facing content, especially on Instagram, has completely transformed the way I think about this thing that I call my mouth that people think of as their teeth and their mouth and their breath and their tongue and all this stuff as a key site for evaluating and maintaining health of my brain, my body, and

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I grew up hearing that sugar causes cavities. Does sugar cause cavities? And when we say sugar, of course, all the biologists and people with a nutrition background roll their eyes because sugar is a very broad statement, right? There are simple sugars, there's fructose, there's sucrose, there's glucose, there's All sorts of variation within the simple and complex carbohydrates.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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But when I'm saying sugar, I'm thinking about foods that taste sweet or that contain sugar that's masked by other flavors, just for sake of simplicity.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Like added sugar. I mean, now if you buy a cracker, typically, if you look at the package, there's some sugar in there, which is ridiculous, but that's a whole other discussion. Yes. Or we could just even say starchy carbohydrates. Yes.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Even a good sourdough bread.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Chips.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Is it fair to say, I know you prefer the term fermented carbohydrates or trying to, for most people who don't think in terms of starches versus fiber or simple, although nowadays people are more versed in that sort of thing. I think of carbohydrates or foods for that matter, that if you put them in your mouth and you just kind of kept them there for a little bit, that they would dissolve.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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like a cracker, like a chip, like rice, like a piece of pasta, as opposed to like a piece of broccoli, which would get soggy, but it's got a lot of fibrous material, so it doesn't dissolve in the mouth.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So I'm hearing this as a repeating theme that diet and lifestyle are going to be more important than drugs or products for keeping the mouth looking good and healthy.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Today, you'll make it clear as to why that's the case. I'd like to just start by looking at this oral health thing through the lens of what I think most people think of when they hear the words oral health, which is people want, it seems, whitish or very white teeth, depending on their preference. They want fresh breath, or at least to not have bad smelling breath.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Perhaps it's worth mentioning just what some of the facets of a clean diet are through your lens of what you consider a clean diet.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Is it fair to say that if one does that, either a child or an adult, that their oral microbiome will not only get healthier but that their teeth will get whiter? And the reason I keep bringing this up is I think a lot of people want white teeth or at least not yellow teeth. Sure.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Having been involved in the public-facing health education business for a little while now, I realize that nothing that is – encouraged to be good for us that takes away from the way that people want to look and feel about how they look gets much traction. So what I, what I like about what you're telling us is that all the

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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things of eating mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods, those are going to be good for our entire body. Great that it's great for our oral microbiome. Probably is good for our whole body because of its effects on the microbiome, at least in part. But what makes teeth white? And will supporting the oral microbiome make our teeth whiter?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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And by the way, there are some folks out there whose teeth need to be less white, in my opinion. Agree.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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And we're being somewhat facetious, but not really. But I think most people would like to have teeth that would be characterized as mostly white. Yeah.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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and they want their mouth to sort of feel good right the question i have is what are some of the things that many many people do in trying to have white teeth fresh breath that actually are very destructive for our teeth and our oral microbiome and if we go through that entry point into this conversation, then we can get into some of the specifics of why that is.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Do people do that? They gargle with hydrogen peroxide?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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The only time I ever had a bad canker sore was because I gargled with 50% water, 50% hydrogen peroxide because an acupuncturist recommended it. He looked at my tongue and then he said, you should do that. And then I did that. And then four or five days later, I had this nickel-sized canker sore on the roof of my mouth. And I was like, ugh.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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And I will say, and I have no product affiliation whatsoever to any specific products, but by switching to hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste, my teeth... they definitely have gotten whiter. I drink a lot of yerba mate and coffee and I brush, but it was sort of a progressive issue of my teeth dimming. So that's been great. I also used to get cavities fairly often when I was a kid.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I'll talk about that a little bit later. But since switching to hydroxyapatite toothpaste, I've had like stellar dental reviews, assuming my dentist is looking carefully. I believe he is, but we'll see. And to me, it just makes so much more sense. Like, give teeth the mineral that they normally use to remineralize. It just makes sense.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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You're talking about kids and the fact that sometimes if their teeth are a little bit yellow, that's normal. One thing that I've been really struck by as the discussion around longevity seems more and more prominent these days is occasionally I'll run into somebody who's in their 70s or 80s

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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even 90s and it's very rare to encounter somebody in their 80s or 90s whose teeth are not like the color of this tea and for those that are listening it's like a very dark brown um i've never seen somebody unless they're doing something highly artificial with bleaching um I've never seen somebody 75 or older whose teeth aren't basically yellow to brown.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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And when you look at people when they're very close to death, their teeth often look very opaque. What is that? Is that a blood flow issue? Is it what's going on there?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Well, I don't drink the wine, but I've definitely had coffee tea since I was a little kid. I've been drinking latte since I was like five.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah. It's delicious.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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That raises a question I'd never thought about before. So if one takes a course of antibiotics... Typically, the advice is to ingest low-sugar kombucha, to have some Bulgarian or Greek yogurt, like repopulate the gut with the substrates for healthy microbiota. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So what's something that you see many people doing in terms of trying to have bright white teeth that actually is harming their teeth?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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She focuses on oral health as a key feature of overall gut health and a powerful modulator of brain longevity, heart health, hormones, and fertility in both men and in women.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Amazing. I really want to not just double click, but really dive into that. No pun intended. I do want to just ask because a subset of listeners will be interested in how they could get their saliva tested.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I've never had my saliva tested. I will say that based on your teachings online, I've made an effort to drink more water in addition to massive amounts of yerba mate and small amounts of coffee. I've made an effort to – well, I switched to a hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste, which has been terrific for all sorts of reasons. I've really emphasized nasal breathing.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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That's something I was into before through the sports performance world because my friend Brian McKenzie, who's a human performance expert, was really big on this a while ago. And the healthiest my breathing and cardiovascular function ever was for me was when

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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um something i don't suggest people do unless it's their profession i was boxing for about a five year span and i had a fitted mouthpiece and i would do my running my road work with my mouthpiece and breathing through my nose um and that taught me to like really how to breathe

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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correctly through my nose and it translated to switching to nasal breathing when i slept i didn't sleep with the mouth guard in um but i think that breathing through the nose is just so important for the reasons you're describing james nestor's described and i will share this little factoid and then and then i'll um then i'll shut up and and nasal breathe um

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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A friend of mine who is a physician at UCSF, he told me that the methamphetamine addicts that come in have terrible teeth. Everyone knows this. Meth addicts have terrible teeth. But do you know why it is? He works with the School of Dentistry. It's because they're mouth breathing.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Meth doesn't actually deteriorate the teeth. It's the fact that they're mouth breathers. And so I find this fascinating. And then, of course, the book Jaws, which was published by Paul Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn, my amazing colleagues at Stanford. years ago. And by the way, when they published that book, people said, oh, this is pseudoscience. This is crazy.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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You're saying nasal breathing epidemic of, you know, fear mongering.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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We now know this is a real thing.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So how do you encourage kids and adults to switch from mouth breathing to nasal breathing?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So do you think that most of the common over-the-counter toothpaste, while they smell minty or pepperminty and taste minty and pepperminty, are they effectively cleaning teeth? And are they causing any damage to teeth by virtue of what they have in them?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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We slurp our food.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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It's like that movie. What was that futuristic movie with the little robot? I hated that movie.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I hated that movie.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah, they're slurping their food, lying on recliners. They've outsourced pretty much everything. Yes.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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How much plasticity is there of the sinuses? So let's say somebody has a partially or severely deviated septum and they could get surgery. And I want to talk about some of the different surgeries. There's a balloon expansion thing that online, it looks really cool. I'd like to try this.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah, they put the balloon up there, they inflate the balloon.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah, they numb it and then they take it out and the... You know, this kind of thing. Well, is actually the appropriate way to do it, both in and out through the nose. But if somebody makes the effort to nasal breathe, so maybe they mouth tape at night, or I'm a big fan of shifting from any mouth breathing to nasal breathing by...

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Today, we discuss many of the common myths about tooth and gum care and how to use specific nutrition, breathing and cleaning methods to repair cavities, whiten teeth and freshen breath while at the same time improving the oral microbiome.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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insisting that I nasal breathe while I do any cardio, unless I'm pushing really hard and then I need to bring mouth breathing into it. But I've noticed just because I can measure snoring through sleep on an eight sleep, I can measure snoring that way. But even if you don't do that, there are other ways you can measure snoring with an app or someone can tell you you're snoring.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So this isn't about a product per se, but if I force myself to nasal breathe during cardio workouts, especially kind of zone two, zone three stuff, translates to less mouth breathing and snoring and sleep. So the question is, do the sinuses actually dilate? Or if you have a deviated septum, do you need it surgically or somehow otherwise repaired?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah. I'm measuring deep sleep and REM sleep through the eight sleep or loop or both. Great. Deep sleep is great, provided I get to sleep by about 10, 10.30, because that's when I capture the deep sleep window. If I go to sleep around 11 or midnight, I lose out on some deep sleep, even if I sleep longer. And my REM sleep's really solid these days. I'm struck by how...

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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convincing the data are about nasal breathing, improving brain function. There were a couple of studies that showed that if people either mouth breathe or nasal breathe in a laboratory study, the nasal breathers have better memory recall, but those were of odors. So everyone said, well, okay, of course it's of odors and you're breathing through your nose. And so you can remember those odors.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So they've now run these studies on with other types of memory and brain function. And it's just very clear that you oxygenate your brain better and you You think better. Your cognition is better. Your memory is better for everything, not just odors.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Well, all you have to do to convince the male half of the audience to focus more on nasal breathing is to tell them and to not use mouthwashes is to tell them that being a mouth breather will give them sexual dysfunction or will, will predispose them to sexual dysfunction and they'll start working on their nasal breathing.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Great message. So to shift over to nasal breathing, if somebody's really struggling with this, are you a fan of mouth taping?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Recently, I had the privilege of giving a talk at Stanford with Renee Fleming. It's like one of the world's greatest opera singers alive today. And I said, well, what are some things that you do for your breathing? Because I ended up talking a lot for the podcast and she gave me some lung and diaphragm strengthening exercises. But then the one that she suggested for

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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emphasizing nasal breathing, because there's a lot of nasal breathing that's done quickly and subtly in order to maintain air pressure in the lungs and for her craft, which I know very little about, but is instead of like doing weight training for the neck, it's kind of a fun one. It doesn't make the neck big. So people who don't want a larger neck will appreciate that. But

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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to exercise the internal muscles of the neck. And the way you do this is something called kiss the sky. The boxers will actually know this, the old school boxers. It looks ridiculous, but I'll do it because I look ridiculous on this podcast all the time intentionally. So you look up at the sky and you pucker like you were a puffer fish. for 15 seconds per side.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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And she said it builds the strength and the neural control over the internal muscles of the neck. So again, no widening or thickening of the neck, but on the inside, and it makes it much easier to take deep breaths through your nose. It probably increases the amount of resistance so that you can fill your lungs more easily.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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So I've been doing a little bit of like kiss the sky and it looks completely ridiculous.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah, George. And you just like really like lip smack as if you were going to kiss this guy from side to side, 15 seconds per side, a couple of times per day, or just whenever you remember it. And I mean, her voice is amazing, like her speaking voice and her posture and everything. So I borrowed that one from her.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Just the scheduling of that alone makes me want to take a nap.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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What's the title again?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Sleep rec, W-R-E-C-K.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Great. In trying to maintain airway health and healthy saliva. And now I'm obsessed with saliva. It's like, cool. It's got all this stuff in it. I was thinking it's just like we know blood has all these goodies in it. We test blood. We know skin microbiome. We know that, you know, women go to an OBGYN. They get pap smears. They get, you know, I mean, they...

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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We know if you ever raise a kid or change diapers, you can tell a lot about somebody's health by the fluids that they emit and that they have within them. I'd like to place saliva on the list of critical things to pay attention to. But chewing gum, is this good for our breathing and for our saliva or not? I'm not a big gum chewer, but is it good, bad, neutral?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I had a bad experience with mastic gum. I was buying it. I love the kind of the primordial aspect of it. It's like a tree sap that you chew on. It comes in this beautiful paper package and, you know, no plastics or anything. You get it going in there and you feel like you're really like working it the same way my bulldog, Costello, would like work.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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He used to like teeth on like bricks and like he was just – and you feel great. And then all of a sudden you'd go – And your jaw would kind of stick. And then later you're like, whoa, like my jaw really hurts.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Yeah, it'll give you that. You know, these days the young influencers are so obsessed by this. It'll give you a little bit of a golf ball hypertrophy of your jaw. That's not why I was doing it. But boy, does it make your jaw feel sore.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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But chewing food is good.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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I don't, to me, almond butter is like never existed in nature. Like the idea that you would take like, I mean, almonds are so delicious, right? But that you would like, like grind them up and put them into a paste. Like to me, the texture is so aversive.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Just the fact that like peanut butter, like to me, these things make no sense whatsoever.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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It's for animals and people without teeth.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Well, I was thinking for adults. I was kind of making fun of the fact that adults are eating like kids, like they're like slurping their food.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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What are the numbers on that? I don't know the numbers on that.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Especially since we're literally putting it into our body, not just on the surface of our body. What was the foaming agent again?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption. I'd been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4390.127

Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to function. Earlier, you mentioned the many different systems and diseases of the body that the oral microbiome has been directly linked to. I would say in science and medicine, there are direct effects, like this mediates that, and then there are indirect effects.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4413.555

Like if a fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, your sleep isn't good, but fire alarms don't regulate sleep. They just can modulate your sleep. But my understanding, and I'm not deep in this literature, but my understanding is that we now have –

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4429.124

fairly conclusive evidence that certain bacteria from the mouth make its way to the brain or heart or other tissues and directly increase either the occurrence or the susceptibility of dementia, cardiovascular disease, that this isn't just a, you know, oh, you broke your ankle. So you move less, you move less, your heart gets less healthy. Your heart gets less healthy.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4453.649

Your brain gets less healthy. This is the kind of point I'm trying to make, but that there's, but that the bacteria in our mouth, bad bacteria can cause real problems for the brain and heart.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

46.509

This is very important because as Dr. Whitman explains, most of the things that people do in pursuit of better tooth health and appearance and fresh breath actually damage their oral microbiome and indeed can lead to serious cardiovascular issues. So today we discuss how to brush, how to floss.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

461.495

Are ulcerations canker sores?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

464.677

Or canker sores.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

467.198

So if one gets a canker sore, what does that reflect typically? Let's assume the toothpaste doesn't have anything to do with it. Is that a disruption in the microbiome? Is it from a physical... injury, like a bite to the gum? It could be all. Okay.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4716.943

Pancreatic cancer is, sorry to interrupt, I must say I've had a couple of friends die of pancreatic cancer. And while I wouldn't want any cancer, that's the one that I really wouldn't want because so many of them are deadly.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4734.62

The Whipple procedure. Yeah. If they catch it early enough, it goes anterior to posterior. And if you catch it early enough, they can lop off the anterior portion, the Whipple procedure as it's called. But even a colleague of mine, a brilliant bioengineer,

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4750.626

a few years ago who had the whipple done and he was progressing well and and then he passed away about a year and a half ago yeah pancreatic cancer is i don't want it no joke and um

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4798.461

What kind of antibiotics are used to treat these things?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4805.024

Radical idea that's going to get me in trouble with my more natural health audience, but I speak to Those are their more pharmaceutical, more nothing, don't take anything. What is the argument against once every three years as a healthy adult doing a round of antibiotics to kill off unhealthy bacteria, replenishing the microbiome in various tissues?

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4832.753

Yeah, just preventative. Like kill off what might be living in the mouth, kill off what might be living in the prostate. I learned recently that the prostate doesn't have the same sort of immune system protection.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4842.922

And so a lot of men, you know, while they don't have UTIs, they have a prostatitis, and they basically just need to do a 21-day or 31-day round of antibiotics. And everyone will be like, oh, you're spreading MRSAs with that or something. But you can protect against a number of different cancers related to the prostate and things like that. Why don't we do this as a regular practice?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4862.809

Like every three years or so, you just kind of hit the system hard for about a week, kill off a bunch of bad stuff and a bunch of good stuff, and then replenish the good stuff.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4887.15

Tell me more about ozone.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

492.157

HSV-1.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

4924.778

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5030.043

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5133.576

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5223.755

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

525.475

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

539.642

Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

558.271

Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5655.523

The two things I've done in the last couple of years that have completely transformed my oral health, says my dentist, and how I feel are, first of all, I switched. A few years ago, I would say really about 14 months ago, I just said, that's it. I'm not eating processed foods again. I'm just not going to do it.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5673.349

So I eat meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and I eat some rice, oatmeal, and vegetables.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5680.931

sour a good sourdough bread butter olive oil i just which is not to say that i won't have a slice of pizza someday but i just i was like that's it like i'm kind of over it 49 years old i've eaten enough of that stuff i'm kind of like bored with it anyway i hear you and what was interesting is i used to get a lot of tartar buildup a lot um despite brushing and flossing on the um what are the lower front teeth called incisors yeah and it was and they'd scrape it away it's a non-issue

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5729.162

I switched and I have just full disclosure because there's nothing to disclose. I have no financial relationship to the toothpaste that you make or the toothpaste that Gator Dentist makes. I actually know his real name, but he hides as Gator Dentist. I love Gator. Gator Dentist. But I switched from fluoride containing toothpaste

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5749.278

not because of fear of fluoride, but excitement about hydroxyapatite. So I switched to using your toothpaste. And I occasionally, well, I routinely switch back and forth with knobs, where I think it stands for No BS, which is Gator Densis to tablet product.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

575.283

And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5764.833

So I use them and neither of them pay me. I pay full price. They don't send it to me. I purchase it like anyone else. And that's made a tremendous difference, says my dentist, by no cavities whatsoever. I was constantly battling this when I was a kid and a bunch of oral health issues. And I don't want to waste our time talking about those right now. Maybe we'll return to them a little bit later.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5785.349

um my teeth and oral microbiome never felt better um it's it's just remarkable yeah it's just remarkable and i have a family member who has some um gut issues like just digestion issues and it's unclear what's going on there and um i'm inspired to try and help them address that through the oral microbiome by switching to hydroxyapatite and and um and test their oral microbiome that'd be very interesting to know what's going on in there because i think you're swallowing

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5813.823

Sorry, is there a best test? Because a lot of listeners are going to say, okay, if they have the disposable income, they're going to want to test their oral microbiome.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5822.716

Is there one that your office uses or that?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5855.29

Spit, so kid or adult will spit?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

588.734

Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5888.772

So Bristle is a company that people can... It's an oral microbiome test, yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5899.618

Are you affiliated with them? I should probably ask because some of the audience will... I am actually, yes, I am.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5915.968

Shotgun metagenomics.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5942.918

Great. Thank you for that. I think some people want to test their oral microbiome and other things in their mouth.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5967.523

Yeah, I feel like oral microbiome is so much more tractable. I mean, switch to nasal breathing, get away from alcohol-containing mouthwashes, consider a hydroxyapatite-containing toothpaste instead of fluoride, which brings us to fluoride. Let's talk about fluoride. I've already been accused of being a sunscreen denier. No, I actually believe that sunscreen exists.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

5989.502

I do occasionally use zinc oxide sunscreen a little bit. I prefer a physical barrier because I'll wear a hat or something. I don't tend to burn very easily, but if I feel like I might burn, I use a physical barrier. I'm being somewhat facetious here because people will say all sorts of things, but I did an episode about water.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6011.556

about oral health, certainly not the depth or expertise that you're providing today. So thank you. And I said, yeah, fluoride does a bunch of things. My question was and remains, why are we drinking fluoride? But this relates to, okay, I'll tell this story briefly. It's not as cool as your story.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6032.722

I was taken to a dentist when I was a kid, and they put these like a mouthpiece with fluoride gel in it on the top and bottom, and they sat me in a little wicker chair in front of a TV with cartoons. And I hated it. It tasted awful, and it kind of like had this sour thing. So I was probably six or seven, so I drank it. I just sucked it up.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

605.211

Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6059.076

drank it down, turned around, barfed all over the wicker chair.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6063.797

Fluoride's a poison, but everything is a poison at high concentrations. So most everything is a poison, excuse me, at high concentrations. So I don't have anything against fluoride, but it is a poison. Then the question becomes, if something is not dangerous in a small dose or concentration... What are its cumulative effects? This is what I have issues with.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6087.231

People say, oh, going through the x-ray machine, no big deal. But what if you fly 150 times a year? Is it cumulative? And so like the logic of the sort of pushback from the traditional, if I will, community sucks. Like they're just not logical. These are my colleagues sometimes too, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

61.322

I know we've all heard that we need to brush and floss, but Dr. Whitman explains exactly how to do those so that they are of the maximum benefit for our tooth health, gum health, and oral health generally. We also discuss the science and benefits of things like tongue scraping and oil pulling. And we discuss fluoride, which of course is a very controversial and timely topic nowadays.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6104.837

Just you go to the dentist to get an x-ray, they're like running behind the next wall, put you in a lead shield, and then they're like, oh no, it's no big deal. Well, how many? How many times a year can you do this before it becomes a deal? So my question is, what is the rationale for putting fluoride in drinking water, given that the contact time in the mouth is so short?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6129.224

And then what's the cumulative effect of bringing fluoride into the gut over and over? And then earlier you said something, and I've never thought about this. The bones contain hydroxyapatite. 60%, I think you said? Mm-hmm. 60% of your bone minerals are made from hydroxyapatite. Fluoride infiltrates the minerals of the teeth and replaces it. So is fluoride going into our bones?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6153.453

Okay, so I'm not trying to paint a scary picture here, but frankly, and people can probably tell, my blood pressure goes up a little bit when people say, oh, you know, you're anti-fluoride. I'm not anti-fluoride, but I just don't get the logic.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6167.499

Like, why would I continually bombard my system with fluoride at the level of the gut, at the level of my bones, If it's good for me, tell me it's good for me. But they're saying, oh, it's so that poorer populations don't have decaying teeth. Sounds like a good argument, not even counter-arguing it. But I can't piece together the logic.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6188.987

And like most public health arguments, I feel like neither side is explicitly clear about what exactly they're arguing about. And that's part of why I have this podcast, to try and get clarity on things.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6203.055

Yeah. And please don't worry that you're going to offend anyone because I'll offend everybody. And they've already said everything they possibly could. And they'll say more. So I'm not afraid to open up these topics anymore.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6215.844

And I'll take the heat.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6221.267

But you have great teeth and they don't.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6230.814

Portland is not fluoridated?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6270.871

The Woo Woo Caucus.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6272.492

That's pretty funny. I like that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

628.839

I've been doing weekly therapy for over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

646.559

There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about any and all issues. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6543.817

Is that right? So if we look at skeletons from dead people, obviously. Well, you can look at skeletons and live people. Skeletons and dead people from dead people that died prior to 1900. How are their teeth?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

663.813

With BetterHelp, they make it easy to find an expert therapist who you resonate with and can help you provide these benefits that come through effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp therapy is done entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6792.874

On par with lead.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

680.984

If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman. For this month only, March 2025, BetterHelp is giving you the biggest discount offered on this show with 90% off your first week of therapy. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 90% off your first week. This would probably be a good time to talk about

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6896.369

I still loathe going to the dentist.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6899.45

I think it's because of that early association.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6902.831

Yeah.

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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

6951.772

And I have Danish relatives. They have very nice teeth. If you told me that there's no fluoride in the drinking water in England, I might be like, well, you know, sorry, my English friends. But that's the stereotype, right? That their teeth are bad. I don't think that that's true any longer. I think that that was true at one point.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

702.827

the whole concept that teeth can essentially build themselves and destroy themselves independent of sugar intake and other factors. So if you would, could you just briefly walk us through this whole business of mineralization and demineralization of teeth? Because I find this so interesting, and later I'll share a little bit. Full disclosure, I have a very complicated oral health history.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7110.993

I mean, the data that show deficits on par with what one sees with lead exposure, that's the most striking thing to me.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7136.041

I really appreciate you taking us through the full arc of the history of it. I think it's extremely important that people take that in so they can start to form their own opinions. And, um, you pointed out a number of, um, logical flaws in, in just the, the way the

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7159.597

treatment of everybody with a potent chemical, especially given the amount of water that people drink and cook with, et cetera, without their consent.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7191.789

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7208.535

Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7222.561

Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7239.19

I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7254.619

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Okay, so I think that pretty much puts fluoride in a, not in a box, let's say on the shelf for all of us to look at.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7276.522

I think this is going to be a very important aspect of public health in the year to three years to come with this new administration and Bobby Kennedy paying a lot of attention to fluoride. And I really like what you said about trying to remove the political aspects of this. If this becomes a blue versus red left versus right thing. We're never going to get to the heart of the matter.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7302.12

And that would be really sad. And the ones that would really suffer would be kids.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7306.824

So a nonpartisan look at this, which is how I heard everything that you said, just seems really critical. Where are they getting the fluoride?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

732.798

And had I known what you're about to tell us, I think I would have spared myself a ton of pain.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

743.482

You weren't my dentist, unfortunately.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7442.643

Super interesting. I will resist the temptation to ask questions about why it sounds like mostly red states are the ones doing this as opposed to blue states, although Portland is in a blue state. Portland's traditionally- Blue city, for sure.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7457.495

Yeah. Right. Blue city in a- Red state. Oregon went red this last election?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7480.665

All right. Well, we'll do another episode in 2090 about politics. Meanwhile, back to the oral microbiome and otherwise. I'm very interested in the relationship between oral health and what you described as fertility, pregnancy, and hormones. And obviously hormones can be about men or women, but let's talk about oral health and fertility.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7509.443

What, if any, knowledge is there about how the oral microbiome or oral health would be impacting egg health fertility um ovulation uh ovarian reserve is that the sort of the level that the regulation of fertility is thought to occur like what's what's what's known about the link

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7622.992

Great. What are some of the mechanical as opposed to chemical things that we can do to improve our oral health? So we were all taught brush and floss twice a day. I even have a colleague who can be caught in the bathroom brushing his teeth after lunch. So he's brushing three times a day. I don't know what motivated that. I do that too. Do you? Okay, great. So what's the deal with brushing?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7651.289

When, let's say... Kind of like exercise. Let's say if someone were going to only brush once a day, better to brush in the morning or at night? Obviously, people should brush twice a day or more. But if one could only brush once a day, would it be morning or night?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7857.705

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

7930.162

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8003.049

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8060.776

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

81.192

It's a very interesting conversation that I believe everyone, young, old, parents, and kids need to be aware of. We also discussed treating things like tongue ties, deviated septums, canker sores, and more. By the end of today's episode, you'll have the most up-to-date knowledge about how to take care of your oral health,

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8529.875

Yeah, thanks for that. More and more I'm getting asked questions on social media and elsewhere about, you know, like, how is this different for women versus men? And in particular, different phases of the cycle and perimenopause, menopause, and essentially the entire lifespan. So appreciate that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8551.388

Sounds awful.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8596.386

What is geographic tongue caused by? I don't have it. I have a family member who has it. It's permanent because they're quite far along in their life now and still have it from childhood.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8649.602

we progress further along in this conversation these ideas pop to my mind that i'd never thought of before like um because i don't tend to use them like um lip balms lipstick um i don't use lipstick i don't use lip balm i suppose i've put like one of those sunscreens when i went skiing or snowboarding years ago on my uh and um now i'm wondering like was that just a terrible idea

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8676.199

People are going to use, but I suppose specifically like lipsticks, are they safe for the oral microbiome?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8780.748

Should we be able to chew equally on both sides of our mouth?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8829.482

You said it, so I'll have to ask. Tongue tie, a few years ago, this was a controversial area. Tongue tie being the stretch of skin between the bottom of the tongue and the bottom of the – what is it?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8841.326

Floor of the mouth.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8842.267

Thank you. And this idea that in babies it should be caught. Other people say it shouldn't be cut. Mm-hmm. and then everyone starts looking at it. I mean, I think mine just seems to have naturally torn back some distance, but you know, what's the deal with tongue tie? Should it be cut?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8862.792

I'll take the heat.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8883.762

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8886.03

When they dried my teeth out for something once, they pull it back and you see it's, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

8890.376

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9089.471

In your case, was it a general anesthesia or a local anesthesia?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9109.897

Sure, you're already in there.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9112.397

But for most people, it would be a general anesthesia?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9124.452

That can cauterize as you make the cut.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

914.114

So my understanding is that the minerals that make up teeth are not the same materials that are put into a lot of common tooth care products. So without getting into a discussion right now about fluoride in water, we will get to that conversation a little bit later, but in order to frame that properly when we arrive there, could you explain why it is that fluoride is in most toothpastes?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9147.694

Peptides and red light therapy. Now we're in the sort of specialized next sort of cutting edge of health and self-directed health or self-directed slash working with a... working with a professional like yourself, oral health care.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9168.125

So can red light therapy, like shining red light and near infrared light, so long wavelength light into the mouth, provide any benefits for a person that doesn't have any other issues, like they just want to maximize their oral health? Is that something that can be helpful? What else is it potentially helpful for?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9257.404

Yeah. All right. So we'll stand by on that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9260.405

Should we be concerned about metal fillings? I don't know what material they use for the other fillings. And sometimes they'll use, quote unquote, sealants. Like they'll see a pit, they'll put some sealant in there. And retainers are made from plastic. Now everyone's worried about plastic. So what gives?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

940.524

When basically we don't have fluoride in our teeth at birth, but there are other minerals in our teeth that certain toothpastes have. And so why would we give an artificial substance to our teeth? Maybe you could explain demineralization, remineralization in the context of fluoride and these other minerals. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9462.324

Cruciferous vegetables, sulforaphane supplementation maybe.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9467.35

The same things that were recommended in the microplastics episode that I did that other people have touched on. So things like sauna sulforaphane.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9477.441

Cruciferous vegetable intake should help. bind to some of the microplastics that surely we are ingesting.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9548.277

A somewhat unpleasant topic, but something that I've heard repeatedly, and I don't know if it's true, is that dentists more than people in any other profession commit suicide at very high rates.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9564.551

Um, and then there's this very dark joke that people make, well, you know, their hands are always in other people's mouths, so they don't have anyone to talk to, you know, like, or, you know, like, or, and then I always think, well, the logic's wrong there. They actually could talk as much as they want. It's the patients that can't talk.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9576

So, you know, set, setting aside that kind of like, um, you know, gallows humor, which I don't, it's not my style of humor. Um, Do dentists kill themselves more than people in other professions?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9619.375

Little Shop of Horrors.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

97.728

both for aesthetic reasons and, of course, to reduce cavities and gum disease, and in doing so, how to support your brain and heart longevity. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

978.798

Our limb bones? Mm-hmm.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

982.262

60% hydroxyapatite.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9883.234

Well, thank you for being a... an incredible ambassador for dentistry and no small part that comes from your obvious kindness and goodness and also the rigor with which you approach it. Thank you. The two are certainly not incompatible. You're proof of that.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9904.963

I wonder if now would be a good time for us to just sort of summarize the top 10 or top 12 things. There are a bunch of don'ts. Maybe we can leave those out, like avoid sugary, starchy, floury foods that get stuck between teeth, that kind of thing. But maybe I'll fire off a few and you can tell me what I'm missing. Be a nose breather, not a mouth breather, unless you're eating or speaking.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9930.472

Keep your mouth shut basically, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9932.834

Or you're exercising really hard and you need to suck for some air or you're scuba diving and you would drown otherwise. Eat non-processed, minimally processed foods. We're hearing that over and over again these days. Brush twice a day, floss twice a day, water pick if you can.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9968.27

So it's brush, then floss.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9973.393

Floss, then brush.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9976.197

No, no. I didn't get it wrong on purpose.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9981.682

Yeah. So I want to add in these things. So maybe oil pull three times a week. Put some coconut oil in there. Swish it around. Practice your nasal breathing while you're doing it.

Huberman Lab

How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

9993.211

But not in the sink.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Roger Schwelt.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Yeah. And we shouldn't have to take vacations to expensive, sunny places to overcome this stuff. That's not the right way to think about it. The way is to try and weave it into our lives at low expense or no expense, getting outside, for instance, opening windows. In cars, it's the worst. So what's wild is if you go to the Pacific Northwest and

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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in the fall or winter when it's really hard to get light. I think Seattle's the northernmost city in the contiguous US. It's so dark up there. And you get into an Uber. They have tinted windows. It's so crazy. It's so wild, especially since the research on this stuff is being pioneered largely out of the University of Washington in Seattle.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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We've got a number of things exactly backwards, and light in our relationship to light is one of the ways in which we do. The problem, I think, is when we start talking like this, people think, oh, well, we're all supposed to have atriums and skylights and be outside all day. It's like, yeah, actually, that would be great, and dimmer and darker at night.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10115.862

So taking small steps towards adjusting toward bright days and— very dim and dark nights is key. We didn't talk about incandescent bulbs. It used to be until about 15 years ago that the quote unquote low efficiency bulbs that were present in all our homes, the bulbs that would burn out pretty often, we know that the incandescent bulbs are more full spectrum.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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They have a lot of red and orange emission. You see them as white, but they look a little warmer. It has that warm. Those are great. Those are great. They're harder to find now. Actually, they were illegal for a short while. I don't think anyone was going to come to your house and arrest you, but you couldn't get them. They were banned. And now they're available again, is my understanding.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Do you know who are really the smartest about this stuff? If you want to know where self-directed human health – is gonna be in five years. You know where you can look? Tell me. You talk to the people who are really good at maintaining aquaria and reptiles. Ah, yes. Because those animals literally die under conditions of pure blue light.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Like if you've ever had fish tanks, I'm like, no, you don't want to send me down this path. But there's a very famous fish tank designer. I was a huge fan of his. Unfortunately, he died of pneumonia when he was 60, Takashi Amano. There's museums in Japan about him. He developed this thing called aquascaping, which is about plants and lighting more than the fish, although there's fish in it.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And everyone, I've been involved in aquascaping in one level or another for a while now. Super geeky, I know. But the whole principle is that you're trying to create full spectrum light, plants, air. You're trying to create the right conditions for these fish and other aquatic elements like plants to thrive.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And anyone that understands how to maintain reptiles or understands how to, which I'm not into, I don't like scaly things except fish, or aquaria, They know you can't have a dearth of long wavelength light or all the fish get sick. The plants die. They just can't do it. Now, there are deep sea plants where the red light, long wavelength light doesn't get down to the bottom.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10270.195

And forgive me for going off on this. Maybe I should just do a solo episode. But, you know, what's amazing is, you know, the intrinsically photosensitive cells of the eye that set our circadian rhythms and that do all this, the quote unquote reason why the peak of the portion of the visible spectrum is where it is for those cells is because it's the wavelength of light that can go deep into water.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10296.913

If you've ever been snorkeling, you only see reds down to about 10 meters or so. You swim down a little bit lower and you need to bring a light with you. Now, of course, the fish that are red are still red down there. You just can't see it because of the lack of reflectance of long wavelength light. So we are walking around in the evening

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10315.199

basically being exposed to what our eye and brain think is daytime, just as our retinal sensitivity is going up. And then all day we're in this and it's not bright enough. So anyway, I'll stop now, but it has me activated, as you can imagine, because you hear about all the mental health issues, the physical health issues.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10336.588

I think they're all downstream, as you pointed out, of mitochondrial dysfunction. put differently, mitochondrial function is downstream of proper relationship to light. Which you so beautifully illustrated. And I learned a ton that I hadn't known before about that. Okay. If I continued on Aquaria, we won't do that. We'll be here. This will be the longest podcast episode ever.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I'd love to talk a little bit about two more things. We will return to New Start. But I want to know about long COVID. Is long COVID a real thing? And what is long COVID? What can be done about long COVID? How do you know if, like most people by now have had COVID at a high level or low level. How do you know if you have long COVID?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

104.236

In fact, by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with the real knowledge on how to best get over nasty infections of the sinuses, lungs, and throat faster, should you happen to get one, and even better, how to avoid them altogether. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10843.576

I would imagine that pretty much everything that you've shared with us today would be beneficial. My understanding is that some of the heterogeneity of even just the COVID response in various people who got it, in addition to the heterogeneity and long COVID symptoms, could be due to the fact that the distribution of ACE2 receptors is very widespread in the body.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10866.565

SARS-CoV-2 binds to the ACE2 receptor. It's a primary receptor site, as I understand. And, you know, I remember early in the pandemic asking on social media, are there ACE2 receptors in the brain and on neurons? And people were like, no, there's no ACE2 receptor. It turns out the olfactory neurons are chock-a-block full of ACE2 receptor and they are bonafide CNS neurons.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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their brain neurons, and you lose them. Fortunately, those can replenish over time in an activity-dependent way.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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But yeah, when I hear that some people got COVID and it was no big deal, other people got COVID and they felt like they had brain fog for six months and are still coping with it, probably has to do with the extent to which the virus was able to bind to ACE2 receptors in one person's brain versus someone else. Maybe their blood-brain barrier didn't get in there at all.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

10986.859

It makes sense because the olfactory neurons are replenished, not just regenerate, but they turn over in an activity dependent way. And so it requires electrical activity and their electrical activity is dictated by smell. And so certain clusters of olfactory neurons and the brain neurons that they connect to or reconnect to in this case are going to be activated by different smells.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11010.328

And so the smell training based protocols for bringing your sense of smell back intentionally includes a variety of smells. You don't just want to smell a lemon. You want to smell lemon, coffee, this. People always say, do I need foul smells too? In kind of unfortunate way, the neurons that detect noxious odors and bad odors tend to not die off as readily. Oh, I see.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11037.405

But it makes sense because those are the cells that actually preserve your innate aversion reflex. Right. They're the ones that can, you know, our ability to detect smoke in the air, something very relevant to the recent history here in LA, or ammonia, things that are potentially hazardous for us. The detection thresholds are incredibly low. We're just so sensitive.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11062.637

Well, yeah. So the trigeminal, it's involved in some of the protection of the nasal epithelium and whatnot. But this is a direct line through the olfactory pathway to the amygdala. A fairly direct line.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11080.741

Right. All of olfaction bypasses the thalamus, but the learning of odors is... Your odor maps are going to be slightly different than mine based on your experience. But when it comes to the representation of smoke, vomit, feces, and rotting bodies, all the dangerous stuff, our pathways look pretty similar. Got it. To be blunt. Given your expertise in lungs and...

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11109.54

A number of people I know have mold issues. They claim or they believe that mold has infiltrated their lungs. Some doctors tell them they're crazy. Some doctors tell them that they're not crazy about that idea. Is mold toxicity a real thing? Can it be treated? Maybe we do an entire episode about this another time, but is it a real thing? And what is the kind of primary treatment for mold toxicity?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11381.34

The reason I asked is it a real thing is that people that I know who believe they have a mold infection or they did do seem to have symptoms that last a long time. Yeah. There doesn't seem to be any general agreement about what specific treatment to use for this unless maybe they need surgery or something. So do you give people antifungals? Is there anything over the counter that can help?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11408.464

Will the sauna protocols and steam protocols we were talking about earlier help? I would imagine a lot of warm, moist air is exactly what fungus loves.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

1149.028

Okay, I have to ask about this. Yes. Most people, including me, are familiar with melatonin secretion from the pineal gland being suppressed by light via some neural circuit pathways that go from eye to suprachiasmatic nucleus. There's a circuitous loop to the brainstem and then up to the pineal. So light suppresses melatonin release from the pineal. We know that.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11506.341

Let's talk about the T in New Start, trust. You talked about higher power. You talked about community. You talked about connection generally and specifically. I've always been struck by how the belief system – can impact our physical health.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11529.569

We recently had Dr. Ellen Langer on the podcast from Harvard who's done incredible studies really about how beliefs can shape our physical health in any number of different ways. What is your clinical observation of people who are ill, severely ill, mildly ill.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11549.921

And the role that trust in, you know, fill in the blank, you can fill in the blank, has in terms of the severity of their symptoms and the rate at which they recover. And hopefully they do recover.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

1173.953

In that context, melatonin is... the hormone of darkness and causes sleepiness. Correct. What is the role of melatonin in the context that you are describing? Because if indeed infrared and other long wavelength light is causing the production of melatonin from the mitochondria in the rest of the body, I'm assuming that's not to increase our levels of sleepiness. That is correct.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11889.639

It's interesting to me that in all hospitals, not just hospitals with an affiliation to a particular branch of religion, you have chaplains. Yeah. You have different people associated often with different religions that people can call upon, which I find amazing right in this quote unquote modern time of modern medicine. Right. As far as I know, every major hospital has this.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11920.01

It doesn't matter how cutting edge or how small a community hospital, which, by the way, many community hospitals are excellent. I should point that out. The words community hospital juxtaposed to, you know, cutting edge research institution. You know, there's actually a debate as to, like, which one you would prefer to go to depending on your needs. But they all have...

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11941.414

generally, as far as I know, have access to people with whom patients and family of patients and friends of patients can pray. And that's not a coincidence. I think that there's a deep understanding of some sort of relationship there. And Certainly there's good science to support everything you just said. And your clinical experience, in my mind, goes along with that.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11968.829

You know, science, as you said, is very reductionist, right? You put people in two groups. One prays, one doesn't. You know, that's the way science is done. Of course. But ultimately, the real-world clinical implications are what... what really resonates. So thank you. Thank you for that. I have one final question and it might get you in trouble, but I'm going to ask anyway.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

11993.167

Let's say I or someone that I care about is admitted to the hospital. What are the things to do or ask that we're not told that can facilitate better care that are within bounds? Now I will go on record since these days I'm in the habit of just kind of saying it all. I'm aware that families of donors to hospitals get special care.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

1201.102

And I do know that melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. Yes. So I'm guessing that next you're going to tell me that it is combating the reactive oxygen species that are produced as a function of mitochondrial metabolism.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

12018.126

This is, I will just tell you, you go to a hospital, there's a code language. I happen to know it for several hospitals. There's a code language of this is a quote-unquote special patient. This will anger some listeners, but it's true. This is the way the world works.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

12033.22

Some physicians too, right? So there's a code language that differs by hospital, and I know it for several hospitals. And I don't wanna get into that. It's one of the more complicated aspects of medicine and hospitals as businesses and things like that. I'm gonna get some angry calls about this. Now, the point of asking this is that most people are not donors to hospitals.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

12056.616

They're not going to be flagged as a special patient that gets the room with the window, that gets sunlight in the morning, that gets the room alone without somebody next to them who's coughing all night. And on and on. So are there specific things that people should mention or ask for in order to get the best possible care when admitted to a hospital? Sorry, I got to put you on the spot.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

12100.493

And they're triaging, right? They're triaging. This person is at risk of dying.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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This person is miserable. Right. and you're less miserable, you're going to wait.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. Dr. Roger Schwelt, welcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I love it. And thank you for stepping right in the line of fire with that one and not trying to dodge it. So it speaks to the kind of person you are. It speaks to the spirit behind your work. which is so clearly in service to helping people. You know, it's such a cliche thing we hear, you know, helping people, I want to help people. But it's very clear that you want to help people.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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You do this in your social media, you do this through your online teaching. We'll, by the way, provide links to all these sources. And you're doing this in so many ways. And of course, in your clinical practice. And, you know, for all those reasons, and also for coming here today to take time out of your very busy professional and family schedule and you have your own self care, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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If you're not healthy, you can't take care of other people's health. I just want to say on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, thank you so much. I learned a ton and I know everyone else listening did as well. It's all actionable in service to basic health and improving health and in service to avoiding illness.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

12317.87

Those are not the same thing necessarily, although they go hand in hand, and to moving through illness should one contract an infection. And, you know, just a treasure trove of knowledge. So thank you so much. I'd love to have you back again.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I look forward to seeing you online, but even more so in person. So thank you so much, Dr. Schwelt. You're a real gem.

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. To learn more about his work and to find the links to him on social media and YouTube, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

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Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Roger Schwelt. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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For those that aren't familiar with these biochemical pathways, maybe one way for them to think about it is that free electrons are not a good thing in this system. You don't want electrons floating around. And in these biochemical steps that convert energy into the stuff that cells can use more readily to move and do everything that we do, electrons are kicked off. Oxygen can...

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work with those free electrons. I'm trying to use language here that divorces us from the classic biochemical pathways so that more people can grasp it, because it's really a beautiful mechanism. So if you have a positive charge to effectively work with the free negative charge, then the system is stabilized or at least isn't pushed in in the direction of inflammation.

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Many people have heard of free radicals.

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And that's what we're referring to.

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You want to offset the free radicals.

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And to the biochemists out there and the biologists, I'm using the term offset loosely. Okay. So melatonin in the context of how sunlight can activate melatonin within cells. Maybe it's worth pointing out to people that when the pineal gland releases melatonin to make you sleepy, that's an endocrine or hormone type mechanism. Hormones act on local tissues and more distant tissues in the body.

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I discovered you because you were putting out and continue to put out incredible information about how to stay healthy amidst infectious diseases, airborne infectious diseases, skin contact-based infectious diseases, and on and on. And nobody likes to be sick. And you've provided me tremendously valuable information about how to avoid getting sick.

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Pheromones act between bodies, right? In the context that you're describing, melatonin is acting within cell. Correct. Okay.

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Do you think that that role of melatonin from the pineal at night is part of the reason why sleep is so restorative? Absolutely. it's probably no coincidence then that when we fall asleep, it's at least correlated with, and in many ways caused by the reduction in core body temperature. It's very unusual for melatonin levels to be high when body temperature is high.

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These things normally are coordinated at night. I'm not aware that it actually drops body temperature, but it might, I'm just not aware of the literature. But what you're describing is amazing. I mean, first of all, Most people's minds, including mine, are going to be blown by the fact that long wavelength light can actually go through clothing and skin.

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And so you can imagine that if you have a minimum of clothing on, whatever is appropriate for that context, and you get some sunlight on your skin, even on a cloudy day, some of this should be coming through. We could talk about that. It's more UV light, short wavelength light, that's going to break through cloud cover.

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And on a clear day or partially cloudy day, we're getting a lot of red light, long wavelength light and infrared and near infrared light coming through.

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I think a lot of people don't realize that because in this age of red light devices and infrared light devices, of which I own one and I love and I use, but people forget that the primordial and arguably, I'll say the best source of red light and near infrared light and infrared light of the sort that we're talking about right now is going to come from the sun, right?

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Yeah. Okay, great. How does this keep us safe from infection? As long as we're here, what else is it doing to offset the 70% reduction in mitochondrial function? Because what we're talking about now is the role of melatonin within cells to lower temperature and reduce these reactive oxygen species. Does that somehow offset the reduction in mitochondria that normally occurs?

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and in many cases, how to accelerate the progression from sick to healthy again. It's been tremendously helpful for getting me back into life, as it were. Let's talk about some of the things that one can do to avoid getting sick when in the presence of airborne viruses, in particular, colds and flus and other viruses, as it were.

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Dr. Roger Schwelt is a board-certified medical doctor in pulmonology, which is the understanding and treatment of conditions that impact the respiratory system, such as colds, flus, and other viruses, mold infections, asthma, and more. Dr. Schwelt is also board-certified in sleep medicine.

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Is it possible to tease away that effect from the other things associated with living in green spaces? Because fortunately, our audience is trained to think scientifically and they'll know, well, it's not necessarily causal, right? People who live in green spaces tend to walk more. They tend to perhaps eat more fruits and vegetables and on and on.

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If you were to think about the major pillars of remaining healthy, especially when one is exposed to colds and flus from kids, in your case, also in the intensive care unit where people are coming in specifically because they're sick, often with infections like colds and flus or worse. you need to take specific precautions to avoid getting sick.

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I should mention that CRPC reactive protein has been associated with a number of blinding eye diseases associated with inflammation and basically Everything bad you can imagine in every organ of the body, heart attack, ischemia, yeah, this kind of thing. Incredible.

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Awesome. Too bad the guy's in England. That's a joke for my British friends. Yeah, it tends to be very overcast there, but the sun does come out in England as well.

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What do you think of as the fundamental layer of keeping a healthy immune system to avoid getting sick? And then we'll talk about how to get over and move through being sick more quickly.

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I'm not encouraging people to smoke. Clearly, the best outcomes are going to be from not smoking and from getting sunlight. But it is a remarkable study.

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Yeah, the dermatologist that I hosted on this podcast, Dr. Teo Soleimani, also happens to be a derm-oncologist. So his specialty is skin cancers. And- I was surprised to learn, but we've talked about several times now offline as well to you and I, I was surprised to learn that the sunlight-induced cancers of the skin, while they do exist, that's real, right?

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You get too much UV exposure, you're going to age your skin more rapidly, you're going to increase the likelihood that you'll get a skin cancer. and this was really surprising to me. According to him, there is no evidence that sunlight induces the deadly types of cancers like melanoma. Those are more genetically determined.

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That's not to say that sunlight can't damage skin, but it is really interesting that more and more data and clinical trials included are pointing to exactly what you're saying, which is that more sunlight exposure is beneficial. And the risks of sunlight exposure can largely be offset by limiting your exposure to excessive UV.

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And it's pretty easy nowadays with any app, a lot of zero cost apps out there. I can put links to one or two in the show note captions that I like that have no affiliation to whatsoever, by the way. We'll tell you when the UV index is highest. It's in the middle of the day, typically. And so it's possible to get plenty of sunlight on your skin without exposing yourself to excessive UV.

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

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What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract

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and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best. In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't.

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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes.

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The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

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I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.

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Wow. Do you see influenza at the equator?

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Is it not the case that... in hospitals and other places. recovery wards, as it were, that there used to be, classically, there was a habit of putting people out into the sun, like sun decks on the roof of hospitals and things of that sort.

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Just as a speculation, why do you think we've migrated away from this, frankly, basic biochemical cellular understanding of how the sun can benefit us? I mean, I feel like so much attention has been paid to how the sun can damage our skin and quote-unquote give us skin cancer that perhaps we overshot the mark.

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unless it comes from an artificial source. Exactly. So this is really the first time in human history that we've had this preponderance of short wavelength, aka blue and green light in the absence of red light. In fact, maybe we should just spend a couple of moments talking about what kind of sunlight exposures you recommend for people depending on time of year.

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And then after that, I'd like to talk to you briefly about this shift away from incandescent bulbs to indoor lighting with LEDs. But just to make sure that I don't move us along before providing some of the key, takeaways. How much sunlight should we get each day in the shorter days of winter and in the fall? And when should this be done?

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In the Jeffrey study, it was clear that there was circadian regulation, as you mentioned, getting that sunlight, excuse me, getting that red light, infrared light into one's eyes early in the day was important. If I'm living a standard life of work and job and people are managing kids and all sorts of things, sometimes it's hard to get into the sunlight because you're just following a schedule.

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How much time each day do you recommend, independent of anything related to getting sunlight in one's eyes for circadian rhythm setting? So how much time, what time of day, and what frequency across the week?

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When you say 940 nanometers, you're talking about long wavelength, like coming from an artificial source? Correct. Okay.

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Most people are not going to own a... a red, a far red, or an infrared light. So I just want to emphasize again for people, you can get that wavelength and all the other relevant wavelengths from the sun.

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That's your red light therapy, folks.

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So is this 15 minutes outside in the first three hours of your conventional day, as I call it? Because people will say, well, the sun comes up later this time. Conventional day, meaning after the sun has crossed the horizon, he has risen.

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And this is a relatively new thing. I mean, certainly when I was growing up. Yeah. if I came home and had a snack after school, I was getting kicked out of the house to go outside. It was routine for parents to tell kids they had to go outside. And I think there's also, it's also the case, as you mentioned, that we're working

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later or at least on devices later into the evening, which means there's more exposure to short wavelength light from devices and artificial sources. Absolutely.

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He does his clinical work in the intensive care unit at Loma Linda University, and he is actively involved in medical and public health education through his terrific online channel called MedCram. Today, we discuss how to avoid getting colds, flus, and other viruses, and how to treat them to minimize discomfort, accelerate healing, and avoid long-term consequences.

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Two questions. One, it's hard to attach a single number to this, but what fraction of the obesity epidemic that we observe in the United States do you think is caused by altered interactions with sunlight or artificial light and its consequences or put differently. Let me phrase the question differently.

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If we were designing an experiment and I wanted to wager the hypothesis that exposure to 15 minutes a day of sunlight could help reduce adipose tissue, et cetera, independent of caloric intake. I know this is kind of a heretical idea. Independent of additional exercise and all that. And I designed the experiment with you and we said, okay, people are going to go outside for 15 minutes a day.

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They're going to wear short sleeves if they can, or just a simple long sleeve clothing. They're going to get this long wavelength light from the sun 15 minutes a day. Based on what you told us about the light shown on the back and the lower glucose response. Yes.

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Independent of all other variables, what percentage improvement in sort of the overall metrics of obesity and metabolic disease do you think you would predict? If we were just going to, you know, we'd bet a sushi dinner, for instance.

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Okay. So that's very helpful. I think a lot of people hearing about the role of sunlight and long wavelength light in particular, its potential influence on improving overall immune system function, metabolic health, etc.,

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might think that this sounds a little bit kind of biohacky because the moment we get into red lights, that sort of like cold plunges, it's kind of immediately associated with kind of biohacking. People say it's bro science, this kind of thing. I just wanted to remind people that

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In the early 1900s, a Nobel Prize was given for the use of phototherapy, which is what we're describing for the treatment of lupus. So the idea that specific wavelengths of light can be used in order to treat cellular health or offset cellular disease is not a new idea at all. And you mentioned this earlier, but I just wanted to underscore that for people.

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The other way of looking at all this is that it's primitive. So some people will say, oh, this is biohacking, right? Other people will say, well, this is just primitive, like get sunlight, of course. But you made a very key point, which is that the way we interact with light, and in particular with sunlight nowadays, is so disrupted compared to how it was just 10, 15, especially 20 years ago.

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I would just encourage people to pay attention for one week to how much time you're actually getting outside. Now, a few people will already be getting a lot of time outside, but just pay attention. How much time each day do you actually get outside? Without sunglasses on and just measure your total exposure to outdoor time, let alone sunlight.

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I think that's just an important experiment for people to do. And because when one does that, you start to realize, my goodness, I'm hardly getting outside at all.

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I also want to point out that when it's raining out or when it's very cold out, Even when it's dark and cloudy, quote unquote dark and cloudy, there's far more photons coming through the cloud cover during the day than at night. People – I can't tell you. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me online and in person, there's no sunlight where I live.

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Listen, go outside on the shortest day of the year. Go outside, folks, and – Look at how bright it is at 10 a.m. or even 2 p.m. Compare that to the middle of the night. There is sunlight. Unless you live in a cave, there's sunlight all year round. It's just striking. So this morning, for Southern California, it's pretty overcast today. It's a misty rain, a little bit more.

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And I didn't want to go outside and get my sunlight this morning. But I know I was going to be in the studio all day. And so I went downstairs and I put on a beanie cap and a hoodie and I just got outside with no sunglasses and got some sunlight in my eyes. You know, it's really bright outside even when it's raining.

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It's really bright outside even when it's storming. And I think people somehow they think that if it's not a clear sunny day, there's no sunlight to be had. Correct. And there are many gems that you're providing us today. But one key takeaway is I want people to understand there is sunlight all year round. Yeah.

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Yes, unless you live truly a subterranean life, that you are underground, there is sunlight during the daytime.

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

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This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

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that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. It's a spectacular story by any account. I wanted to just touch on the fact that there's no replacement for sunlight. Getting patients outside is hard. And at the same time, most people listening to this aren't, fortunately, are not patients. Thank goodness.

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Many people, however, have relatives or themselves are elderly. As people get older, they tend to slow down, get outside less. There are many fortunate exceptions to this, but... One of the setups that I created for myself that I think is certainly feasible for a lot of people is the following. Well, first of all, I always make it a point to get outside and get sunlight in my eyes, rain or shine.

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And regardless of where I'm traveling and et cetera. I do that every single day. If I miss a day, it's only because of something like a flight where I happen to be on a plane at the time of sunrise or something like that, in any case. But I have a setup that I constructed for myself that is basically a 10,000 lux light. These are available.

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I don't have any relationship to 10,000 lux light sources. Those 10,000 lux light sources tend to be short wavelength shifted. They tend to be very blue. They're white light, but I don't think they have power across the visible spectrum. I think they're very red light and infrared diminished. They tend to be very blue and green light enriched, and it shows up as very bright white light.

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So that's what I put in front of me when I first wake up if the sun isn't out yet. But now I've started putting a red light near infrared light next to it.

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And I'll spend the first couple minutes of my day, usually as I journal or do something like that, or sometimes just with my eyes closed, just pleasantly facing in the direction of the 10,000 lux white light and the red light near infrared light. And I must say, again, this is anecdotal, but the combination of the two, not only does it certainly wake you up, the white light will do that alone.

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We know the biological basis for that. But I have noticed a tremendous improvement in energy, mood, focus, et cetera, that comes from the addition of this red light near infrared light. This is not an advertisement for red light near infrared light. I promise. Although, you know, this podcast does have a relationship to a medical grade red light devices.

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But I mentioned this because what I'm trying to simulate there is sunlight. But I still get outside and get sunlight. So I just mentioned this setup because it seems to me that hospitals should be able to create this setup for a minimum of cost. Certainly less cost than it takes to maintain a patient for one day. Exactly. Exactly.

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I mean, the cost of maintaining a patient for inpatient care is so high. Medical staff, the disposables, the actual disposing of the disposables, the janitorial staff, the cafeteria. I mean, hospital costs are outrageously high. Now, of course, people will hear this and think, well, that's exactly what hospitals want, right? The longer you stay, it's like a hotel.

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The longer you stay, the longer they can charge you or your insurance. And I'm not a conspiracy theory type.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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But it is interesting that for many people, they associate going to a hospital with staying a long time and getting sicker. Sometimes they get better and go home. Thank goodness. You're certainly a well-meaning doctor. The nursing staff are well-meaning people.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Put simply, why don't hospitals include light therapy given the abundance of data on circadian rhythms and light therapy? And I'll just attach one more thing. My audience always gets upset at the duration of these questions slash editorials, but this is my wheelhouse, this whole light thing. So I can't help myself.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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There's also something known as ICU psychosis, which is when people who are perfectly mentally healthy go into a hospital because of the relationship to light and the disruption in circadian rhythm from the overhead lights, the checking of the patient in the middle of the night, the disruption in sleep, et cetera. People literally develop psychosis that resolves itself the moment they get home

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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and get onto a normal schedule. And it's well known that the patients that are in a hospital bed next to a window don't experience this to the same degree, if at all. So it's sort of like, I feel like we're sitting under an avalanche, not a waterfall, but an avalanche of data telling us what we need to do.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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That's for sick people. If we're thinking about health maintenance and health improvement in healthy people who are not in the hospital, which fortunately is most people, it's very clear, 15 minutes a day of sunlight exposure. And if you absolutely can't get sunlight exposure, think about some artificial light arrangement that might be beneficial.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I want to make sure that we talk about not just sunlight exposure and long wavelength light exposure from artificial sources, but the flip side of all this, which is the importance of darkness at night. I'm aware of a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where they basically had kids sleep in either a completely black room

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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or a room that had a 100 lux, this is very dim light, folks, 100 lux light source down in the corner, kind of like a night light, and then looked at morning blood glucose levels, and there was a significant difference in the direction of you don't want any light in the room that you're sleeping. Now, that's hard to do, especially if you're traveling, hotels, but eye masks,

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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In particular, silk or even faux silk eye masks, which are very comfortable, can essentially provide that. It's very clear that it's the light exposure to the eyes. if anything, do you recommend for people who are basically living in an environment that's too bright at night? Do you yourself use blackout curtains? I mean, how rigid?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

5008.1

I find that this is the one that's a little bit harder for people. You have kids. I mean, how should we work with these data? And what are your thoughts about the importance of getting things really dark at night?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Yeah. In experimental conditions, that's definitely true. I mean, the sensitivity of the human visual system is extraordinary. I mean, your rods, the higher sensitivity photoreceptors in the back of your eye can can detect a single photon, one photon. Most people aren't familiar with thinking in photon quantities, so that might not mean anything to them.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Put differently, and these are wild data from Chuck Zeisler's lab at Harvard Medical School. light suppresses melatonin. The question is how much light do you need?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

5101.92

Because of the increase in sensitivity of the eye at night, this rod system and these specialized cells that send signals to the circadian clock, 15 seconds, 15 seconds of artificial light exposure will significantly quash your melatonin. That's a whiz at night. 15, yeah, right. So if you go to the bathroom, so then people say, well, what am I supposed to do? How do I navigate at night?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And how do I make sure I'm peeing in the toilet, especially for men, right? How do I not trip and fall, this kind of thing, en route to the bathroom or getting a glass of water? It's actually, you know, it's funny, the answer turns out to be so logical, but you almost have to hear it before you kind of go, oh, that makes sense. So perfectly fine to use your phone as a flashlight.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And then people say, well, a flashlight's really bright, but you're not shining the light into your eyes. So looking at your screen dimmed way down in the middle of the night, is going to be very detrimental to the melatonin system right at the time where you want melatonin high and other things too.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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But looking at a flashlight shown into the hallway so that you can navigate, very different scenario than it shining directly into your eyes. And then there are a number of different red light sources that are pretty good, like little red light lamps that are effective. Or you can just turn your phone to red light mode. There's a way to do that.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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That's my good friend, Dr. Samer Hurtar. Now, keep in mind that Samer is the head of the chronobiology unit at the National Institutes of Mental Health. So he literally lives and breathes this stuff. The other thing about Samer, which is interesting, is when I first met Samer, he was very, very overweight.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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What Samer may have relayed on that podcast, perhaps not, is that by changing his relationship to light, sunlight and getting sunlight during the day and darkness at night. And by the way, he lived in Baltimore at that time. So it's not trivial to do that. And changing his sleep schedule to one of getting into bed around 9 or 10 p.m.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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and waking up earlier as opposed to staying up late and sleeping the equivalent amount into later in the morning. He lost over 80 pounds effortlessly. his appetite just adjusted because he finally got in tune with his natural circadian cycles.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I agree that we probably should only be eating when the sun is up. I myself, I like dinner somewhere around 6, 6.30. It's tough for me, but I totally agree. If people were willing to meet me for dinner earlier, I'm good. Now, it is true that sleep is vastly improved when you haven't eaten in the previous couple of hours.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It's also true that trying to fall asleep and stay asleep when you have gnawing hunger in your belly is not easy. No. Okay.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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During today's episode, we discuss long COVID as well as the use of sun and red light to stimulate mitochondrial and therefore metabolic health across the entire brain and body. That opens up a broader discussion about phototherapy, which is the use of light to control health and temperature and other levers for improving brain and bodily function.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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We're human.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I want to talk about the other aspects of new start, nutrition, exercise, trust, rest, et cetera. But before we do that, I want to touch on something that I've been curious about for a long time. It's somewhat controversial. I've stated my stance on this previously, took some heat for it, but maybe I'll revise my stance. You see a lot of patients in the ICU with flu. Yeah.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Obviously the flu can be deadly in some circumstances, but for most people that are healthy, generally healthy, first of all, how concerning is flu? Like, should I really be concerned about flu this winter season, even though I feel robust? And then the second question is, do you personally get the quote unquote flu shot? I said on a previous podcast that I don't get it.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And I took a lot of heat for that. understand that the flu shot does protect against certain forms of flu, not all of them. That statement was kind of pushed out there by folks saying that I was going against CDC guidelines. I'm not going against CDC guidelines. People should do as they choose. They should just know what they're doing. I've never gotten a flu shot.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I don't know if I've ever gotten the flu, but that's my personal choice. And it's not based on any specific fear of the flu shot. It's because it's never been an issue for me. And I'm okay with getting a cold or a flu every couple of years, feeling miserable for a week or two and bouncing back. I feel like that's good to develop my own antibodies.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

5399.938

But maybe I'm thinking about this completely irrationally. So do you get the flu shot? Do you recommend the flu shot for healthy people? Do you recommend the flu shot for people that are metabolically challenged?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Okay. So at the beginning of the flu season when they say flu shot available now. So it's a mix of antibodies against known strains of the flu.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Or people that are exposed to a lot of flu.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Because like you, you work in the ICU. Right. And if I may, like do you – Do your kids get the flu shot?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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So you started your kids once they were in their teen years?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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So if, well, I am telling you that I've never gotten a flu shot. Am I being irresponsible as a citizen? I don't tend, I mean, I go places, I go to restaurants, I go to the gym. I've remained healthy for the most part. I'm an occasional sniffle here and there. Every couple of years I'll get- It's been a long time actually now that I think about it.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Are there any known risks of the so-called flu shot? And if so, what's the percentage risk?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I would not want Narcolepsy. I used to work in a laboratory for a summer that were studying narcolepsy. It was the laboratory Emmanuel Mignon's lab at Stanford School of Medicine. He and his colleague Seiji Nishino identified the hypocretinorexin mutation as the source of narcolepsy. And people with narcolepsy...

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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People think it's just excessive daytime sleepiness, but anytime they have it at the extreme, in the extreme examples, when people with narcolepsy have any kind of emotional activation, they fall asleep and they have cataplexy too. So they can't, they can't drive. They become essentially paralyzed like a, like a sleep atonia. Right. Pretty devastating disease.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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So it sounds like that particular strain of the flu shot in Europe was neurotoxic in some way.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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In the winter months when flu levels are high, are you wearing a mask from the moment you walk into the clinic in the morning until when you leave? When you walk up to a new patient, if you know they have a flu or if you know they don't have the flu, are you masked up? I mean, this became a big issue around the COVID discussion.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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But to what extent does wearing a conventional mask or even an N95 actually protect you from flu?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Well, thank you for avoiding bringing the flu here. It's wild because ever since I started this podcast, you know, we put out now two episodes a week, full-length episodes on Mondays and the shorter essential episodes on Saturdays. So I can't afford to get sick. And I haven't been sick in years. I take care to not get sick, but I'm gonna think real carefully about this flu shot thing.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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What about hand washing? Is that, so a friend, let me give a little bit of backstory. The guy I worked for as a postdoc was an MD, PhD. And he used to joke about the fact that hand washing did nothing because he was, in his prior life, he was a surgeon. I think he did rotation, a surgery rotation. He eventually became a neurologist, then a researcher.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And I used to say, what do you mean the hand washing does nothing? And he's like, well, have you ever seen what a physician does before surgery? You know, they wash up to their, basically their shoulders. They've got betadine, they glove in properly. And you know, that's how you prevent infection. Washing your hands does nothing. It's a formality. And I thought there's no way that could be true.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Then I started digging around in the literature about this and it's kind of mixed. Like, so to what extent does washing our hands actually help us avoid getting infection?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And flu and cold can survive out on surfaces for how long?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I've talked before on this podcast about these PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon, which have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It's extremely durable and it's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to the pan so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 20% off. Let's talk about water and air. I think I, like many people, am curious as to how much water I drink. Is that influencing my susceptibility to infections, et cetera? Water on the body. water we get into, this kind of thing. And then air, humidity, temperature, ozone, anything interesting in those?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Let's start off with one of my favorite topics would be the S in New Start. Let's talk about sunlight. Listeners of this podcast or anyone that's heard me on social media know that I'm, you know, as... Bigger proponent of getting morning sunlight in one's eyes as one could possibly be without repeating himself 10 million times per year.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It's a daily activity that we just know has such an outsized positive effect on the whole setting of the circadian rhythm and thereby improved daytime mood focus and alertness in nighttime sleep. But the way you describe sunlight, it goes beyond just getting morning sunlight in one's eyes. So if we want to parse this S, sunlight, in New Start, How are you thinking about sunlight?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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You can take exogenous interferon? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You take it as a pill?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I'm surprised that I haven't heard of like peptide clinics selling interferon. Can you inject interferon subcutaneously?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

6825.951

Wow. For those that don't have access to interferon infusions or a sauna, or even a bath. So what is it? A five to 10 minute hot shower, then get under the blankets, this kind of thing. I mean, this is kind of good old mom's advice kind of stuff.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

691.172

Is it sunlight on the skin? Is it also midday light, not just morning sunlight? Is it a certain amount of sunlight? And then maybe we can also talk about some of the underlying mechanisms.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7051.84

Well, and LPS will do this, right? LPS, as you mentioned, is lipid polysaccharide. I think they get it from yeast cell wall or something. It's a foreign antigen. Yeah, it's a contaminant in a lot of gray market peptides and things that I suggest people don't take.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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There are a lot of people now who are interested in peptides and they buy them on the gray market and it says not for human or animal use research purposes only. And people often say, well, why not use those? Why do people have to go through a physician and a compounding pharmacy if they're gonna explore that? territory at all.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And the reason is it's very clear that most of the gray market peptides have LPS in them. So small amounts, but injected repeatedly over time, people start getting the systemic inflammation and fever response. That's a little bit of a tangent, but it gets to the same mechanism. So when you say the use of water in this context, it's really about trying to heat up the core temperature of the body.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7114.48

Okay. And so when we think about Russian banyas, which I'm a huge fan of, there's a bunch of them in different cities. Whenever I'm in New York, I go to this place down on Wall Street, Spy 88. I have no relation to them. And they have a medium hot sauna for Russians. Medium hot is very hot. It's like a spice in certain restaurants. You have to calibrate to the... the local ethnicity.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And then they have very hot sauna. And what they do there, even when they're not sick, is they'll go from moderately hot to hot to steam, and then back to a hot, hot sauna, then into cold water. So they're doing heat, cold contrast therapy. And the Eastern Europeans and Russians have been, and Scandinavians have been doing this. for centuries, right?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Here we think of it as like biohacking and this new domain of health, but this has been going on for a very long time.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure they exist down there, but I feel like Brazil in the summertime probably feels like a sauna. So you don't need a sauna.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Right. Whereas Siberia... In winter, probably feels a lot like the way I imagine Siberia in winter.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Dr. Schwell emphasizes that sun and red light therapy have a long and well-established medical history and their mechanisms of action are known. And therefore it's not just biohacking as many people think. We also discussed the sometimes controversial topic of the flu shot and if and when you should get one.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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The Russians use these eucalyptus branches.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And it's the, it is, it's eucalyptus branches. I call it, I think it's called platza or something like that. Yeah. And yeah, it costs a little bit more, but if you go to one of these Russian banyas, you can... pay someone who's skilled in this, they basically make you lie down, you cover your face and groin, and then they hit you with these eucalyptus branches.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Not to smack you with them, but the idea is that in the sauna, you're going to bring some of the... additional vasodilation to the surface of the skin so you're getting more blood flow to the periphery is the idea. I don't know if there's any truth to it.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7346.328

Amazing. Can you just repeat one more time, even though you said it incredibly clearly, this phenomenon of how the white blood cells are liberated by cold and constriction?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Both, actually. White blood cells, right. White blood cells are involved in the adaptive immune response as well. Amazing. I've never heard of deliberate cold exposure being used to liberate white blood cells in that way, but it makes perfect sense. It sounds like it's largely mechanical.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7555.658

I love it. One thing that people might want to play with a little bit, although they should be careful, right? If you're pregnant, forget the sauna for a while. Yeah. You know, if you're- Absolutely. You know, everyone has different thresholds for heat tolerance and cold tolerance, but spend a little time in a Russian banya and you'll soon realize that they all wear these like wool hats.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And you might think, oh, well, that's just going to heat you up more. No, it insulates you against the heat. Oh. And so you can stay in much longer because the signal to get out, like that it's too hot, is a brain signal first. Which makes sense, right? Your brain basically evokes something analogous to the gas reflex when you're not getting enough oxygen, right?

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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So if you go in there with a towel on your head or you cover your head, what you find is that you can sit comfortably at much hotter temperatures in the sauna. Got it. that could be a problem, right? Because you don't want to burn your skin. But the sauna actually provides a lot more degrees of freedom and exploration safely than does hot bath.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Because if you get into a bath that's truly too hot, you'll burn your skin. Correct. Right. Whereas in the sauna, you know, you might go into a very hot sauna. I'm very heat tolerant. I don't like the cold so much, but I do it anyway. But I'm very heat tolerant. But when I first hit a, you know, a 210 degree sauna, which is very, very warm sauna, if your head isn't covered,

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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your heart starts racing, you feel like you want out of there. If you go in there wearing like a wool beanie cap, you're like, you're fine. You're fine because the brain signal doesn't get kicked off for a while.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7668.266

You know, it's so amazing how humans find the same solutions through different portals. I'm fascinated by this. You know, every once in a while, I sit back from the information that we touched on in this podcast since we launched in 2021. And I think, you know, there are so many different tools and protocols and you're providing additional ones today. They almost all fall into about

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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six to 10 batches. And whether one comes through the portal of traditional Western medicine or Eastern medicine or what the, you know, Finns or the Russians do or what they do, it's so interesting that, you know, we're talking light, temperature, and these things obviously relate, hydration, which I'm sure we'll talk about, mitochondria, cellular metabolism.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I mean, you know, there isn't an infinite number of conceptual themes and they tend to sort of batch into them. And I think understanding those themes helps people make decisions. Like if you're on the road and you're feeling run down after getting off the plane and you're thinking you might be coming down with something, you get that little throat tickle. You only have access to a hot shower.

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How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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That's your best bet. Do that. You don't need a sauna. Ideally, you're getting sunlight. You don't have sunlight. You can take some of the other measures that we were talking about before. Yeah, I find it fascinating that humans eventually converge on the same answers. It just sort of varies in terms of what you call these things. Exactly. You call it hydrotherapy. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7749.151

I call it deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure if you're, you know, in some cases.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7793.809

That said, there are things that purportedly we can take to accelerate our progression through an illness, should we get one, and to help avoid illness. One of the things I'm most interested in is your thoughts on NAC, N-acetylcysteine.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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My understanding is that a few years ago in this country, there was an FDA ban on N-acetylcysteine, but that the people who had already been taking N-acetylcysteine were so bullish about it that they fought back and it has remained freely available without a prescription. My understanding is that N-acetylcysteine requires a prescription in some countries.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7830.436

Could you tell us what the various uses of N-acetylcysteine are and what its potential role is for avoiding or even accelerating the progression through a viral or other type of infection?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7850.264

I'm guessing, oh, I didn't realize you were Canadian. I'm guessing you are correct and I'm incorrect.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7859.993

Mum, mom, you know, ninth grade and grade nine. These are all Canadian.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7864.597

Yeah, so.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7904.235

Does it also effectively treat liver failure due to other things like alcohol?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

7930.071

So NAC is a glutathione precursor, is that right?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8001.753

All right, next episode, I'll show up looking like a chia pet.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8070.614

So for those that aren't familiar with monomers and polymers and this kind of thing, basically you're taking a bead and you're creating the polymer, which is more like beads on a string. Exactly. Exactly. And that can capture more things, like a big clumpy – big clumpy sticky molecules aren't quote-unquote bad or good, but in this context, they're definitely bad.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8367.62

I see. So I started taking NAC at, I think it's 600 milligrams or even 900 milligrams, three to four times per day, which is a very high dose, but restricted to times when I felt like I might be coming down with an infection or I was traveling in the winter months. I still do this. Or if I had any kind of low level congestion. And my understanding is that it's a mucolytic

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8404.833

It's used to treat cystic fibrosis and to counteract the buildup of fluid in the lungs, as I understand. So it will make your nose run a bit if you have a little low-level congestion. But what I love about it, and I don't have any – to be clear, folks, I don't have any relationship to any company that sells NAC. I'm not paid by Big NAC or anything similar. Or Big Mac.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8429.455

Certainly not by Big Mac, but by Big Mac either. Yeah. but I don't like conventional decongestants. I like steam, but I don't like taking over the counter decongestants of the sort of conventional commercial type because they tend to be very drying. They sometimes have a little bit of a stimulant quality to them. I just don't like them. And I find that NAC...

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8452.389

in addition to increasing glutathione, which can only be a good thing, is a great decongestant. You do have to keep blowing your nose quite a lot. If you take it right before you go to sleep and you sleep on your back, you can wake up like feeling more congested. So you have to kind of understand what it's doing. That's why we're talking about it in this way.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8468.999

But I find that it's helped me move through periods of, you know, sort of exposure to colds, maybe flus, but certainly colds, much faster. And actually there are data to support that it can prevent contracting the flu virus.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8575.807

Yeah, you raise a really important point around this. I mean, the joke that was told to me years ago is, you know, a drug or a compound is a substance that when injected into an animal – creates a scientific paper, meaning it's very easy to see things change when you add, when you do a dose response curve of just about anything.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8597.464

And some people might say, well, thank goodness, are any compounds doing anything that's real or is it all placebo? I think there are real effects of compounds. The context is really important. Do you take NAC

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I know people take it continuously. I've never taken it continuously. I sort of enjoy the fact that there are certain compounds out there like NAC that I personally can observe a benefit from if I take it for short periods and slightly higher doses, and then I stop. And I have the, you know, unfounded theory that it –

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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A single photon.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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helps punctuate the effectiveness because you're not, you know, because there is down regulation of pretty much every mechanism you could possibly imagine.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8681.949

And as I recall in the study that you described where people took this 600 milligrams of NAC twice a day, the reduction in severe symptoms or was it the number of people that experienced severe symptoms went from somewhere in the high 70%, maybe 78% or something like that. I'm not quite exact on the numbers here, folks, to about 28%. Is that right?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8718.552

And you're getting an increase in glutathione to boot.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8724.237

Wonderful. Other things that have been shown to improve symptomology or perhaps even immune system function, maybe we could talk about zinc.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8735.345

I take what most people would consider very high levels of zinc and I've been doing it for a long time and I'm going to continue to do it because I do my blood work and it works for me.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8786.95

Well, it's never charted out by body weight either. So I weigh 215 pounds. So what's the risk of copper depletion?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8801.557

I believe it's in my blood panel. It is in my blood panel. And I don't have a flag there, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8831.425

Why doesn't somebody market an interferon inhaler or nasal spray?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8885.41

It's worth touching on this that so much of the symptomology when we have a flu or a cold or what have you is the immune system doing its thing. The fever, the congestion. Correct. Yeah. And we think of that as the illness, but it's often the byproduct of the body trying to extrude or kill.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Dr. Schwelt, as you'll soon hear, is world-class at making medical concepts and the actionable items related to health exceptionally clear. As a consequence, I'm certain that you'll truly appreciate the knowledge that he shares in your efforts to be and stay healthy at any age.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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What about... these cocktails that I see of eucalyptus oil, oregano oil, all this stuff, is it completely worthless?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

8963.75

They actually- Phagocytosis, folks, sorry for interrupting, but is it a gobbling up of bad stuff by good cells?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9029.535

I have a theory that it's not going to be very kind to eucalyptus trees or koalas or anything related to eucalyptus, which is that maybe the eucalyptus oil is a mild irritant.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9045.64

at the cellular level, you inhale it, you get this menthol-like odorant, it's kind of caustic, and the immune system reacts to it by activating phagocytes to go gobble up more stuff.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9134.023

Don't ingest eucalyptus oil, folks. I'll take it as a personal insult. but I'm not gonna take responsibility if you do it anyway. That's a great segue to air. I've heard conflicting things vis-a-vis Should we sleep with an air humidifier? Should we sleep with a cold room under warm blankets?

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9159.362

Lowering core body temperature definitely helps us fall asleep, but that's under conditions where we're not combating an illness. I have had the experience several times now to the extent that I really believe it's a real effect where,

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9171.005

If a room is extremely cold, even if I'm under warm blankets, breathing that cold air at night, I'll often get some respiratory stuff going on, probably because of a drying out of the respiratory pathways.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9201.375

Sorry, folks. Vaping might be better for you than smoking, but it's still terrible for your lungs. The vaping community hates me because they want me to say it's not carcinogenic, but the data show that it can cause popcorn lung. I mean, it's just not good.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9279.483

Incidentally, what are your thoughts on non-smoked, non-vaped, non-dipped, non-snuffed nicotine? So nicotine gum, nicotine pouches will raise blood pressure, vasoconstrictor, but definitely increases alertness while causing relaxation. I'll come clean. I occasionally will take a milligram or two, which is very little, of nicotine gum. But never smoke or vape or dip or snuff it.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9348.266

It is highly habit forming slash addictive. It does seem that at least in people 60 and older, there may be some mild cognitive sparing or enhancement due to nicotine use. I think that's an area that needs further exploration.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9367.456

Yeah. I'm not going to try and convince you to get on nicotine. I'll also say that it doesn't just hit the nicotinic receptors. It'll also hit the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9377.017

And that's one reason why if you do take nicotine gum or use nicotine gums or pouches, what you'll notice is when you don't use it, you'll feel as if your throat is mildly irritated and then you take it and it relaxes it.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9390.124

And this is one of the more subtle but powerful ways in which it is habit forming. Ah. is that people feel like they're more verbally fluid, they can breathe easier when they're taking nicotine, but it's a vasoconstrictor. So for those interested in performance enhancing effects, it's pushing you in the opposite direction. Anyway.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9608.293

I think that's interesting. Someone made the comment recently that so much of modern health or our attempts at being healthier in modern times, perhaps the better way to put it, is about trying to bring the outdoors indoors. That's, you know, we exercise in gyms, whereas we used to, you know, carry buckets of

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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fruit and soil and you know uh we are talking about some artificial light um there's no replacement but uh ways to supplement artificial light excuse me ways to supplement sunlight with artificial light you know we're just indoors a lot more and no one's suggesting that we all run around in loincloths outside all the time um but there really does seem to be

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Many factors within outdoor environments, so many both known and unknown, seems that the reductionist approach to science, while I've made it my profession for many decades, is it makes sense why no one thing seems to solve all the issues that we're after, that we need to experience these things in combination. Maybe nature is just the best way to do that.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Important to point that out, that the high-dose supplementation is not the same as ingesting something in the context of a food.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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Oftentimes there's no red light in there either. Exactly. They are really blue, green, yellow. sometimes even UV light. I mean, the fluorescent lights in a department store, for instance, or in a pharmacy, I haven't done the spectral waveform analysis, but those who have, it's published, it's out there.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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There are a lot of data about environmental occupational health stuff would show that it is the emission spectra are severely tilted toward short wave lights. And there's hardly any red light in there. Whereas a candle, for instance, or a fire roaring, fire roaring candle, people ask that, sorry to interrupt, is almost all orange and red light.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And then people say, well, won't that wake me up at night? And a lot of people were surprised to know this. I'll just ask you, and it's not a trick question, but how many looks do you think come from like a really bright candle or a roaring fireplace? or the brightest moonlit night on a full moon.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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So somewhere between one and 10 would be high level. And then I started and I was like, there's no way that could be, right? How could it be? It's like this roaring fireplace or the moon that lights up. So it turns out that if you're at a campfire and we're facing one another around the campfire, I can see your face across the campfire. I can see the front of your body.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And so it looks like it's so bright, it must wake me up. But no, you have no trouble going back to your tent and falling asleep or your cabin. if you turn away from that bright campfire, you need a flashlight to navigate even the shortest distance, which tells you that it's not very bright at all.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It's very concentrated, but the fall off of that brightness is really what indicates just how dim it really is. But if we think about an LED coming off a wall panel to adjust temperature in a hotel room, It has something like 100 to 400 lux. And yet we think of it as a dim nightlight. And so this is sneaky stuff.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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It's really diabolical because that wall nightlight or thermostat light messes up our vision. glucose regulation, as shown in really good peer-reviewed studies.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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And the Scandinavians, my stepmom is Scandinavian, understood this intuitively. And so in the evening, they don't have ceiling lights. They turn off the ceiling lights, and then they only use desk, you know, sort of table level or even floor lights. Now, candles along the floor would be the ultimate, but it's super dangerous.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

9949.977

And we just had a bunch of fires here, and those were outdoor fires at first anyway. And the reason we're kind of – riffing in a kind of light bio improv here, is that when you step back and you just look at it logically, we have dim days, as you pointed out before, we have bright evenings and nights, and it's all short wavelength at night. It's terrible.

Huberman Lab

How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

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I'm beginning to think that many, many, many of the problems that we have in terms of our metabolic health Sure, that has to do with food, certainly has to do with lack of exercise and a number of things, screens, et cetera. But I'm convinced that the light piece is at least one of the top three, if not the top two major factors in determining the kind of obesity metabolic crisis.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Victor Karian. Dr. Victor Karian is a professor and the vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I could also imagine, and I think this is normally what people are referring to when they talk about transgenerational trauma, this idea that somehow the genome is modified by the trauma such that even if kids are raised by

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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parents that adopted them, or they have no contact with the grandparents or great grandparents that experienced the trauma that somehow they are more vulnerable to, or in some cases, the idea has been put forward, carry that trauma, put in air quotes, such that their life is more difficult, even though they never had a direct experience. of that trauma.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Today, Dr. Karian clearly explains all of that so that by the end of today's conversation, you'll really understand what PTSD is and is not, and of course, the best ways to treat it. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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What are your thoughts about transgenerational passage of trauma, both forms, both the narrative passage as well as the potential for epigenomic or genomic passage of transgenerational trauma?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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In terms of stress, I always think of stress as both a response within the brain and a response within the body. And I'm not alone in that belief, I think.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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We know that adrenaline, epinephrine is released from the adrenals, but also from areas of the brain like locus coeruleus, so that there's this parallel effect of elevated states of mind, more alert, more focused on narrow locations in space and time. And the body is also prepared for action. I think this is what underlies the increased heart rate, the shaking in some cases, sweating.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It's essentially a preparation for action. With PTSD, I often hear that some of the symptoms are more of the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of autonomic arousal, things like dissociation, fatigue, kind of checking out, which I realize is dissociation. But things that are more akin to kind of parasympathetic, right?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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For those that don't know, the sympathetic parasympathetic represents the continuum of autonomic interaction. Sympathetic having nothing to do with emotional sympathy. It's all about

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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fight or flight type responses, although at lower levels, it's what's responsible for us being alert here, but not in fight or flight and parasympathetic being more of the rest and digest, even leading into sleep type responses.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So, you know, if somebody experiences a big stressor, a trauma or chronic stress to the point where it becomes PTSD, is there a tendency for them to be more hypervigilant and You know, a startle response, to have their head on a swivel all the time looking for danger, or to be more dissociative, or can both sets of phenotypes exist in the same person? Yeah.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Post-traumatic stress injury. Injury. Interesting.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Let's talk about cortisol for a moment. It's a topic that has not received enough attention in previous episodes of the podcast. I'm just going to summarize a little bit of what you said, and you'll tell me where I'm wrong. Cortisol starts to rise just before we wake up in the morning, assuming a good night's sleep, and peaks maybe, I don't know, 30 to 90 minutes after waking.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Eight sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. And it turns out the ability to do so allows you to get the maximum amount of deep sleep, slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep at the different stages of the night.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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you slow risers like me, probably a little delayed. By the way, the height of that peak and the accelerate, I would say the steepness of the curve can be increased by viewing morning sunlight. We know this bright light increases that cortisol peak, it'll make you a better early riser.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But in any case, typically the pattern then is that it rises through mid-morning and into the early afternoon and then starts to taper off to lower levels. And as you mentioned, we'll see bumps in cortisol post-meal. If there's a stressor, we get a disturbing text, we get a bump in cortisol, but these aren't huge peaks unless it's a big stressor, correct?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And then by evening, cortisol levels in healthy individuals are typically low. and that allows for transition into sleep, among other things allow for transition into sleep. But you said in these kids with PTSD, cortisol doesn't come down to low levels as much as it does in healthy individuals in the evening and nighttime.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And that I imagine would lead to perseverating on stressors from the day, this kid was mean, I have a test tomorrow. Maybe any stressor becomes more, intense in our mind and body, as it were. And that perhaps could lead to issues with quality or duration of sleep, which then could perpetuate the cycle. Do I have that correct? Correct. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So has the direct intervention of just trying to suppress evening cortisol ever been done? I mean, certainly there are drugs that will do this. Has that approach ever been taken?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Memory, anticipation of the future, problem solving, context-dependent problem solving, so on.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I definitely want to get into some of those interventions, including some of the ones that you've developed that are very novel and are

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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being used to great success. I want to just circle back for a moment on this relationship between PTSD and, in some cases, inappropriate diagnosis of ADHD. As you mentioned, these two things can coexist in the same person.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So we don't want anyone who has been told that they have ADHD and PTSD or even just ADHD to immediately assume that that diagnosis is wrong based on what we're going to talk about. But it is possible that the ADHD that a child is told they have is reflective of PTSD. And I imagine that if that PTSD arises through something in the family structure or dynamic

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It would be even harder to unmask because the parent perhaps would be less motivated to try and understand that if they played some sort of role in it. So I realize this is a complex problem with a lot of layers. But if you were to just throw out a number based on your experience, what percentage of pure ADHD diagnosis would you like to see explored for the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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influence? Let's just keep it kind of diplomatic that way, as opposed to saying what percentage of ADHD do you think is actually PTSD?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.

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It was the condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that doing regular quality therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular physical exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every single week.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It's so interesting. You said, if I understood correctly, that in... Kids with genuine ADHD, the hyperactivity is fairly persistent across environments and with different people, et cetera.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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This is a very important point. When I did the solo episode on ADHD, I was frankly shocked to learn, but

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It was validated by the literature and certainly by the responses from the audience that kids with ADHD and adults with ADHD for that matter absolutely have the ability to sharply attend to something if it's something that's very engaging to them, really exciting, something that they typically enjoy.

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But their ability to direct and maintain attention in other environments that are required for normal life progression, school, work, relationships, et cetera, is very diminished compared to those without ADHD. So what I have in my mind is a step function, meaning an increase in a steady state of hyperactivity in a kid with ADHD, but then a jagged line beneath that of attention.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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This is, I believe, the picture I'm painting here. But that in PTSD... The hyperactivity is a jagged line. It really needs a cue, as you said, a loud noise, or maybe it's the presence of a particular voice. I once attended a trauma – it wasn't trauma release as much as it was genuine trauma treatment center out in Florida.

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He is one of the world's foremost experts on post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular, the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents. Although his knowledge and today's discussion certainly extends to adult PTSD as well. Dr. Carrion is also the director of the Stanford Early Life Stress and Resilience Program.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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There are essentially three components to excellent therapy. First of all, excellent therapy should provide good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues in your life. Second of all, it should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance or both.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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A friend of mine runs this center, and I was out there learning about the practices they use – in order to inform potential experiments for intervention in my lab back at Stanford. And he said something really interesting. He said, you know, when you bring people in to this sort of environment and they've all had trauma, you see a pretty rich array of responses to even just the same conversation.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And then at one point, perhaps because he said that, I noted that a woman raised her hand and she said that particular timbres of voices in the room were really activating her. you know, this was important. It wasn't just what was being said.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It wasn't that people were yelling at each other or even the volume of the voices, but that even just the frequency, the lowness or the highness of the voice, as it were, was triggering something in her brain that was giving her these bodily sensations. And it was a very important insight for her to be able to then start to direct interventions.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So I guess we all hear the kind of now stereotypical example of You know, the veteran who experiences combat comes back and hears a car backfire and then they hide. That's kind of – we read about this and hear about this. But it seems like it's much more subtle than that, that sometimes the cues for this hyperactivity, this hypervigilance is –

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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very much linked to something that sometimes even the person with PTSD doesn't recognize until they start to be put into that environment again and again, and then they can pinpoint it. My question now is if they can pinpoint what the cue is, do they stand a better chance of recovery as opposed to somebody that just like feels like I'm hyperactive, then I'm exhausted, I'm wired and tired and

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And now I also imagine that in kids, they don't have necessarily the verbal proficiency to be able to express what's going on for them. And in fact, many adults don't really know because we don't have a great language for expressing this body-mind thing. In any event, a lot of questions there.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But what are your thoughts about the requirement for being able to understand what the cues, what the triggers are in order for a child and or adult to be able to start to make inroads into their PTSD?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And thirdly, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that can allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life and relationship life, but of course, also your relationship to yourself, your professional life and all of your career and life goals.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I see. So they were traumatized before they went to combat.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can build all three of these effective components of therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, I'm thinking again about post-traumatic stress injury. The reason I like that term, even though I realize I'm using it non-clinically, is that if we understand that the autonomic nervous system, this seesawing back and forth or this push-pull between the sympathetic fight or flight and parasympathetic rest and digest, loosely speaking, systems are always at play in us.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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When we sleep, more parasympathetic. When we're alert and calm, more sympathetic. And when we're stressed or having a panic attack, extremely sympathetic. If we understand that as a biological system, which it is, that deploys hormones and shapes our patterns of thinking and what's available to us in our memory, et cetera, then PTSI, post-traumatic stress injury,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I feel like it liberates us a bit to understand that, yeah, this autonomic system has been disrupted in a way. And if I think about the autonomic system as a seesaw, which I often do, I think about the seesaw having a pivot point with a hinge. It's almost like the post-traumatic stress injury is to create the tendency for that hinge to be too tight and

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And sometimes that makes it more like dissociative and we're exhausted and checked out. And maybe it creates the hinge to be too tight such that we're more on the sympathetic, excuse me, sympathetic the way I, for those listening, I'm using my hands, but you don't have to see it to understand. that the alertness system is locked in place. It's hard to get out of that.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I almost feel like the injury that is post-traumatic stress injury is a tightening down of the hinge with the seesaw tilted too much to one or the other side. And I, as a biologist, I just wish that we understood what that dysregulation was or is. Chances are it's not one location in the brain or body. It's going to be a network phenomenon.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But I feel like the word disorder, the D in PTSD is so critical because it highlights the importance and the pervasiveness of this thing. But that the I in post-traumatic stress injury hopefully will give people – it certainly is giving me some sense of relief or liberty and understanding that these are nervous system injuries that need treatment.

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And that there isn't something wrong or crazy with us. because of the fact that we suddenly feel like we're having a panic attack. I've had people I know close to me in my life say, I'm having a panic attack. I'm like, what do you mean? What happened? They're like, nothing happened. That's the point. Well, how'd you sleep? Well, it's okay.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And you start doing the curbside diagnosis that neither of us is qualified to do, right? But this is what we do as caretakers for each other in our lives. And it very well could be that their autonomic system just got That hinge is just locked in place for whatever reason. Maybe it's one sip too much of coffee. Maybe it's one sip too little. It's probably something or a bunch of things.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I realize I'm getting outside my expertise here because I'm not a clinician, but I feel like This PTSI thing is sticky and important for people to hear about. It's certainly changing the way that I think about PTSD.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I feel like a good night's sleep allows some recalibration of the tightness of that hinge. Put differently, anytime we don't sleep well or long enough, we're not good psychologically. A good night's sleep is good for everything. We're finally at the point in history where everyone seems to accept that.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I really have to tip my hat to Dr. Matthew Walker from UC Berkeley for writing the book, Why We Sleep. It was only a few years ago that book came out. And he deserves such a token of praise for that because... Prior to that, there was this, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality. I think people knew sleep was important, but they didn't really understand.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And he had to come out as kind of the downer message, like, listen, this is serious stuff. You better sleep. You better sleep. But I think we're there now. I think in 2024, we're there. I think people understand.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about some of the treatments that you use and have developed for PTSD in young people. And maybe we should define young people. Are we talking about the 18 and under, just because that's typically what we think about?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So preschoolers are going to be essentially, I think of kindergarten starting at five. So you're talking about zero more to more or less five or six years old is the preschoolers, kindergartners, and then transition point. Correct. And then... For the kids we're about to talk about, we're really talking about, what, six years old until about end of adolescence?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Okay.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I can see where that might be problematic when the parents perhaps were the source of the trauma.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Victor Carrion. Dr. Victor Carrion, welcome.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So it's just a... just highlight for a second, the fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging is wonderful because it allows a lot of imaging both on the superficial outer parts of the brain, but also deep into the brain. My understanding is that and perhaps this has changed in recent years, that the spatial resolution can be very good.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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You can pinpoint very small areas if you have a powerful enough machine, magnet. The temporal resolution, the ability to see changes in the neural circuit activation and deactivation over time, at one point was somewhat limited, but now some of those limitations have been overcome.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But then what you're talking about near infrared spectroscopy is excellent because it can be taken to a school, right? You don't have to, you couldn't bring an fMRI machine to a school unless it's a medical school where there's the machine. It's much less expensive. The downside is, oh, excuse me. And my understanding is that the spatial resolution isn't quite as high as MRI or

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But the temporal resolution is very high, which is a huge advantage. And then there's this one disadvantage that you can only really image the outer portions of the brain. But nonetheless, there's a lot of information there. So a little technical lesson for people.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'd like to talk today about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular in young people, but also in adults. But before we do that, can you educate us on the definition of stress and maybe distinguish between short-term stress and long-term stress? And then perhaps we can segue into PTSD. Okay.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. I want to get into the Q-centered therapy versus cognitive behavioral versus the no therapy conditions you just described.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But before we do that, I just want to have a brief discussion about some of the neuroscience you mentioned because I think people will find this very interesting and certainly not just a listing off of names of structures. You said that the frontal limbic pathway is important here, the limbic pathway, including the amygdala, but other structures as well.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And my understanding, and I think the generally accepted understanding about these limbic pathways is that they create a response state, a state of alertness, a state of relaxation, that they translate certain information that impinges on them into a level of reactivity, either low, medium, or very high. When I say reactivity, a tendency to move,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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toward or away from something or stay still, put in broadly speaking. Now, the fronto piece, the feeding in of information from the frontal cortex where context-dependent decision-making and, as you said, executive function takes place, is so critical for all of us as we mature. Even as a, I would say, if you look at a puppy, everything's a stimulus. And then over time,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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They're not going to pick up everything in the room. That's without question largely due to the development of these frontal limbic pathways. And in children and in humans, that is, it's the same. I can imagine that the signals coming from the frontal pathway to the limbic system are going to be somewhat cryptic to people that aren't familiar with psychiatry and neuroscience.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So maybe we could just throw a few of those out there. Here's an example. Tell me if I'm wrong. But the way I think about this is, okay, a kid is in a room and they're hyperactive or maybe something set them off and they're particularly vigilant and stressed. They're in the stress response.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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The frontal cortex is the pathway by which an internal dialogue could be delivered to quiet that limbic pathway. The message that would perhaps trigger that would be the kid recognizing because they learned this is okay. I've had this happen before. It passes. Or I'm supported. There's Dr. Carrion. There's my mom, there's my dad, there's my teacher, there's my friend.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'm supported because we know social support is important. Or it's normal to feel stress every once in a while. So these kinds of thoughts or these internal dialogues that we're told that we should do for ourselves when we're stressed, I think we can be pretty certain that that's the kind of information that would trigger this frontodolimbic suppression.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Absolutely not. I have absolutely zero minus one musical ability, but I love music.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Well, me with some degree of proficiency, but not much.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But everybody else, yes.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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A support system, that's right. And with enough practice hours and enough focus and determination, I'm convinced I could become at least proficient even at 49 years of age.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Even when the limbic system is not active, do you encourage your patients to practice positive thinking?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Even when they're not in the stress response? All the time.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So she would drink a glass of orange juice in order to quell her anxiety? Yeah, if she felt bad. And is this something that she would do even when she wasn't feeling stressed? I mean, it's kind of interesting. It suggests and it... completely squares with everything I understand about prefrontal cortical limbic pathways, which is that they're highly subject to contextual learning, right?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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If anything, the frontal cortex is this incredible feat of evolution that allows us to link essentially any stimulus with any um, non, uh, learned response in the body. Right. I mean, this is what allows, you know, soldiers to learn to overcome their fear of bomb blasts and run toward them if, if necessary. I mean, it, it can cut both ways.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And today's discussion focuses on the psychological and the neurobiological underpinnings of PTSD and which treatments are most effective for PTSD. We focus heavily on a particular therapy called Q-centered therapy that was developed by Dr. Carrion and colleagues that has been shown to offset the triggering by words or events or memories that often are the precursors to PTSD episodes.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Do you think this is why we hear the kind of classic anecdote about the patient who has anxiety attacks whose psychiatrist gives them... a couple of pills of medication that can help reduce anxiety and they decide to keep those pills in their pocket should they have an anxiety attack. And knowing they have those pills in their pocket allows them to control their anxiety.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It's so interesting, the sense of agency and control over the non-negotiable stress response. You know, I sometimes, unfortunately, get, in my opinion, incorrectly attached to ice baths. We've talked about cold water exposure on this podcast. Our colleague Craig Heller at Stanford Department of Biology, phenomenal scientist, was on this podcast.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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We talked about some of the beneficial uses of deliberate cold exposure. There are a lot of arguments. Does it increase metabolism? Doesn't seem like it does very much. Is it useful for inflammation? Perhaps. But the one thing that everyone agrees is that being in uncomfortably cold water makes you breathe faster and stress a bit. In other words, it kind of sucks. It's uncomfortable.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I think one non-negotiable fact about deliberate cold exposure is that it gives people an opportunity to explore their own stress response if they're going to do it safely, right? You take a cold shower, you have some control. You can get out immediately, obviously. You don't want it so cold that you give yourself cardiac arrest. You have to be careful with deliberate cold exposure.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But the adrenaline response to uncomfortable cold is non-negotiable. And I believe that whether or not somebody decides to recite the alphabet or think about how cold it is or whatever it is, What they're doing is they are practicing this frontal control over the limbic pathways. It's just sort of a general exercise for controlling the limbic system through thought.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But as our colleague David Spiegel has said to me many times, he says, you know, it's not just the state that you're in. Here we're talking about stress as the state. It's how you got there. And in particular, did you have any control over how you got there and whether or not you can get out?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I think that the kind of stress that you're talking about in post-traumatic stress disorder or in post-traumatic stress injury is typically of the sort that people didn't have a choice. Certainly these kids didn't have a choice about the initial exposure to the trauma or stressors.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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that also the stress is showing up when they would least want it to appear or when it's very inconvenient to appear.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It could be from a cold shower. I always say that because oftentimes people think, oh, you know, they're just trying to sell cold plunges. And the truth is you don't need that. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's independent of income. Actually, a cold shower will save you money on your heating bill. I'm not saying everyone should take a cold shower. I love a nice warm or hot shower.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I sometimes use the cold shower as a stimulus and I hate it every time, but I always learn something each time. By the way, it feels great when you get out. So that's nice. And it does for many hours, especially if you end it with some warm water. But the learning, I believe, is in recognizing just how destabilized our patterns of thinking get when we have adrenaline in our body, which is what

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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uncomfortable cold does, and it deploys that adrenaline in the brain and body. It also is a great learning in seeing the return to a baseline, just seeing how that affects our psychology. To my mind, I can think of no other zero cost or even negative cost, meaning saves money, approach that works the first time and every time. you know, that is safe enough, right?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, I'm not interested in anything that has to do with snakes, for instance. I don't mind spiders. I'll pick them up with my hands as long as it's not a black widow or a particularly large spider, and I'll put it outside. But I don't like snakes. I don't like thinking about them. I don't like being near them.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So, you know, there are other stressors that one could use, but it's so individual, whereas cold water seems to be pretty uncomfortable for everybody.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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No interest. It's so interesting. You know, these things get so firmly rooted. But I'd love to talk about this toolbox because, first of all, it's, according to your work, and this has been done repeatedly, it's very effective. And I love the idea that it can be customized. So the words that come to mind is a customized toolbox for combating stress and PTSD and

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And the fact that it can be customized and maybe even covert, like we can have these tools inside us. We don't need to share them with anybody if we don't want to, but that they are very effective. I think that those are very compelling reasons for exploring the toolbox approach a bit more here.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So you mentioned one way to go about this is to think about, or to have in mind some negative, some neutral and some positive experiences. And then to think about the different tools that one would deploy under those different conditions.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So what would that look like? Let's say I'm a nine-year-old, I come into your clinic and I meet the criteria for PTSI or PTSD. What sorts of questions would you ask?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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They say teammates?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I love that.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Are there any particular tools for when kids are stuck in a stress response? Yes. Because I myself am familiar with... You know, the toolkit that I use, certainly teammates is one of them. And I have others, including long exhale breathing, physiological size. These things will be familiar to some of the listeners.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But certainly there are times when we're stressed about something and we don't want to be. And we have a hard time pulling our thoughts and our emotions and the stress response together.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Well, what's so interesting to me about the stress response is that while it's quick to start, it's slow to shut off for logical reasons related to our evolutionary trajectory, right? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could stress when needed and then it would turn off when needed?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But what we're really talking about here is intervening in the stress response either before or as it's happening, but then also making sure that the tail of that stress response isn't too long.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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In certain cultures, there are accepted practices that adults use to deal with stress, things like worry beads. And a few years back, there were those, what were the little spinner things that kids had? When those were popular, maybe they're still popular, did you observe any reductions in stress? You know, kids have a lot of energy. Like sometimes I think we confuse energy and stress.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Wouldn't we all love to have the kind of energy that we had in childhood? I was observing this the other day, you know, you'll see a kid sitting cross-legged listening in class. And then all of a sudden it's time to move across the room and they'll just pop up and move across the room.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Like when was the last time any of us like popped up out of our chairs, unless we were particularly excited or scared as adults, just that immediacy to action. implies that there's a lot of energy in the system. So I could imagine that having some ways to siphon off some of that energy through as far as I can tell, you know, things like worry beads or Or fidgets or whatever those are called.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean they might irritate some adults around. But really they're pretty innocuous when you think about it.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean we have colleagues that not all of them. This is not a requirement for being a professor at Stanford. But I've got colleagues that work 80 hours a week. you could argue that's healthy or unhealthy depending on the context and their agreements with others. But, you know, that requires a lot of energy and I know they are not particularly happy working less.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So, you know, I think sometimes we are dismissive or kind of pejorative about of physical energy and shaking and moving. But, you know, I see, I know someone in my life who balances her knee while she works and it kind of makes me a little bit nervous, but boy, does she have a lot of focus and energy. You know, so, I mean, I think it's wonderful, in other words.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Earlier, meaning off microphone, we were talking about the fact that some people, indeed some kids, have a different tendency to anchor towards thinking or feeling or action when under stress. And you were describing the four quadrant system. Could you share with us this four quadrant system? Because I think it's both extremely valuable to children and to adults.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It's certainly something that I plan to incorporate into my life.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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In this four corner system, and forgive me because I called it a four quadrant system, but in this four corners of the square system, you said there's thinking, which is cognitive. There are emotions. Then there's feelings, which are somatic, physical, and then actions. So actions are straightforward. Thinking would be, for instance, if I understand correctly, I'm in danger.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Emotions would be, I'm scared. So it's a verbal label. I'm depressed. I'm scared. I'm sad. I'm... Yeah, in a way it's cognitive too, right?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And then in terms of the physical feeling, it's of the body, but it could include of the head too. Like I have a headache or my heart is racing or I'm... or something of that sort. And then actions, of course, is the action that they take.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I love that earlier you were talking about practicing positive thinking even when, perhaps especially when, one is not in the stress response or trauma response, but also of course when one is in the trauma response. I think that's just so vitally important for people to hear, certainly for me to hear.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'm not claiming to have PTSD, but as a novel concept that I've not heard raised before around these topics. The other is this four-corner system, which immediately occurs to me as so powerful because it breaks down the kind of reflex arc of the stress response into its component parts, right? What's of the body? What's of the thinking? What's of the thinking that's emotional?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And then what's the action? And you said as soon as one – identifies one of these corners and starts to kind of look at it differently and consider some of the optionality that exists, an alternative, that all these other options cascade from that.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I believe that in doing that, you've described what for thousands of years really, but recently we've heard a lot about in the kind of mindfulness arena as creating space. Like this notion of creating space, not outer space, but creating space within us to choose better options is something that I think until right now, as you've described this, has remained unfortunately very mysterious.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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People talk about, okay, you want to be – reactive, excuse me, you want to be responsive, not reactive. Responsive implies some optionality to your responses. Reactive implies kind of a reflex arc of just whatever the default was. But this notion of space is like too squishy for me as a biologist to really be able to latch onto.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I would argue, given the prevalence of PTSD and stress, it's probably too squishy for most people. It hasn't really led to anywhere specific. But I think what you're describing is the ability to become responsive as opposed to reactive. assuming that the word responsive includes like some options within it.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And so this four-corner system to me is genius because it gives us an anchor point to start from. So could you say that if a child or adult is uncomfortably stressed, maybe about a trauma, but just is like caught in the stress response, that actually pulling out a pen or pencil or crayon, as it were, and drawing a square and just really like, what am I thinking? Like, maybe it's just like...

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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This is terrible. I don't like it. Writing down, I'm embarrassed. Like I'm not with my friends. I'm like not, you know, I'm flushed. You know, my cheeks are flushing, whatever. I'm feeling like just... weighed down or something, and then thinking, well, what are the actions? I want to remove myself from the situation.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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At that point, is the suggestion that one find what is the point of entry that feels most accessible and to start there? Yes, with one caveat.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, we're very poor at assessing others' internal states. We are. As our colleague Carl Deisseroth, who's also been a guest on this podcast, I heard him once say this in a very large lecture. He said, you know, we're terrible, absolutely dreadful at assessing other people's emotions. In fact, most of the time, we don't even know how we feel.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Okay.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And is this something that you suggest kids only do with their therapist or is this something that they can do on their own as well, assuming that they're old enough to write and to think about it?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, I'm certain that many, many adults, not just children, can benefit from these tools. I mean, I would argue that most of the bad things that happen in the world are the consequence of dysregulated autonomic function. put kind of bluntly.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, I mean, I think most homicides are homicides of jealous rage. From what I have read, I don't know if that's still true. And of course, then that It's probably also true for all the things that are not as severe as homicide, but still dreadfully bad, like assault and things like that.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Perhaps this is the appropriate time to give you the opportunity to editorialize a little bit about social media and online behavior, setting aside really aggressive online behavior, bullying and things like that, which of course exists and is really serious. Do you see the behavior of kids and adults online, this sort of...

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Just maybe even the addiction to online commenting and reading of comments and the kind of battling of issues back and forth that clearly isn't going anywhere. Some of it goes someplace functional, but most of it, I would argue, especially among the adults, is going nowhere. It's just very circular. It's my side versus your side, my side versus your side. And emotions get really stirred on there.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Do you think that is reflective of a lack of tools for self-regulation? Do you think like what we're seeing is the manifestation of just a lot of challenges in the world and or an outlet for people to just vent without the need to address their own internal state and what's underlying the venting? I know many –

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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very, very intelligent adults who eventually just had to quit social media in order to have any level of functionality in their life.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I think what you're describing to my mind is a situation where the tool has become the terrain. It's like social media has become the landscape in which many people live as opposed to the real world. I mean, my original understanding of social media is that one would experience and do things in the real world and then bring those to social media. That's certainly what I do.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I teach on social media and I do the learning for that teaching. the drawing in some cases, the preparation in the quote-unquote real world, and then bring it to social media. But I feel like it's almost like the hammer has become the landscape. The house. Yeah, something like that. The hammer has become the house. Yes, that's much more eloquent and appropriate.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, I feel like with social media, the tool of social media has become the terrain in which people are living in. So that just feels like a closed loop is sort of an engineering example. So it's like it doesn't go anywhere. Like you can never actually get the relief that you're seeking. And I think we default to descriptions about dopamine and dopamine hits. And there's some truth to that.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But the more I look at the literature on brain activation during social media events, It doesn't really speak to dopamine and reward prediction error as much as it does just sort of a mindless compulsion and kind of just passive overuse as opposed to like rewards, like, oh, this is so cool and that's so cool. I mean, it can be.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, I've been watching some of the track and field races of the Olympics and there's a, I mean, I was cheering out loud for a few of them, but it's usually something quite different.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I see that in a lot of adults as well as kids. Let's talk about risk. Up until now, we've been envisioning a treatment situation or a study that you're running where a kid and perhaps parents as well are brought into the laboratory or clinic at Stanford and you're talking to them, assessing them, they're developing a custom toolbox. And that's a wonderful opportunity for

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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kids who sadly have PTSD or PTSI to be assessed and to develop tools that can really help them. That's been proven by the work you and others have done. But what about the many, many millions of kids and adults who are at risk, either because of lack of access, it could be due to finances, geography, poverty, any number of different things, or they simply don't even know what PTSD and PTSI are.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Their parents don't know. What are some of the tools and interventions that you think could be implemented at the level of schools, families, or even individuals that might help them?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, the East Palo Alto School District, for those that don't know, Palo Alto, I guess it could be called West Palo Alto, is a separate city and county from East Palo Alto. Palo Alto is not exclusively, but is known for, at least nowadays, let's just be frank, fairly tremendous affluence relative to most places in the world, put bluntly.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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East Palo Alto, a separate county, different school district, police system, has a for as long as I can remember having grown up, um, in Palo Alto, um, has always been stricken with far fewer resources. And, uh, while there've been tremendous efforts to improve the, um, the situation there, it is still at a, um, steep disadvantage financially.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Um, but of course, um, many, uh, amazing people working there and living there. And, um, You know, and growing up there was some exchange across that East Palo Alto, West Palo Alto as it were, in the school district, but they're pretty separate domains when it comes to resources.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And this has been shown to be effective in both children and adults. Today's discussion explores the difference between anxiety, stress, and trauma. We talk about how those things of course are related, but how they can be separated out to better understand if indeed somebody has trauma and how to best approach the treatment of that trauma.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yeah, that area where IKEA is used to be called, do you remember? It was called Whiskey Gulch for years. Kind of terrible name, right? But it was a stark contrast right as you literally crossed the train tracks heading towards Highway 101. In that case, that portion of Palo Alto, Crescent Park, an extreme of wealth to an extreme of poverty. In literally a distance of 10 meters.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So you needed literally physical and demographic separation. So you went with what used to be called the peninsula, the South Bay, East Palo Alto, and then San Jose, far enough apart that the kids weren't talking enough to blur the treatment groups.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Can I, sorry to interrupt, but could I ask you a little bit more about the curriculum? You said five, you said, or 15 to 50, five zero minutes, two to three times per week. And did the kids have to like, change over to their yoga clothes? The reason I ask is that I could think of a number of real world barriers to getting something like this implemented.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I feel like going jogging, usually you get a little sweaty, you need running shoes. There are other forms of exercise that require that less. But these days, as far as I know, not every school requires physical education. When I was growing up and through high school, you had to literally suit up. You had to go in the locker room and put on your PE clothes as it were.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And then you'd run or play volleyball, whatever the PE teacher told you to do, you had to do. if you wanted to get a decent grade. Is the yoga being done, you said it could be in the classroom or at a separate location, but are the kids basically getting up out of their chairs and just right in their school clothes doing this for 15 to 15 minutes?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Is it also possible that PTSD gets worse if we tend to look at it over and over again, ruminate on it in the absence of any structured clinical support? Meaning if people perseverate on their traumas, can the negative impact of those traumas actually root deeper into us?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Wow. What spectacular results. I mean, 73 minutes more of sleep is like, I mean, talk about effective medicine. You know, I mean, we agreed at the outset that sleep is the foundation of mental health and physical health and all forms of cognitive and physical performance.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, it's just, I mean, we know this, the study done at Stanford, albeit a small one of having athletes just get a bit more sleep or even just stay in bed a bit longer and no, not on their phones. just lying quietly with eyes closed and resting or sleeping more improved shot accuracy in basketball players. This has been shown in so many domains of cognitive and physical.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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It's like not even worth spooling off all the examples, but that is spectacular. It also makes me think I should start doing some yoga because I do get enough sleep, but that's significant. What do you think are the barriers to having this sort of thing implemented at national scale?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Now, I always think about this, you know, okay, so the results are in, maybe it's one study, maybe it's two, but you're talking about a basically harmless intervention. And actually, it's a very therapeutic intervention. Sure, there are some people that won't be able to do all the poses, etc. But there's always something that somebody can do.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Even people that are immobilized, there are certain forms of believe it or not, cognitive yoga. And that friend of mine who works with people who are quadriplegic, they can do certain things to keep nervous system function online. But, you know, essentially anyone can do this. What are the barriers from taking it from this East Palo Alto school to a study, to another study? Okay, San Jose school.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Now, let's say you get all of Santa Clara or, you know, neighboring counties. you know, what does it take to get something implemented at national scale so that the work can really ripple out and benefit all these kids who are, of course, are going to become adults?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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So parents and even non-parents talk to the teachers in the school, talk to the principals in the school. And I've been learning about the power of the telephone for lobbying. This has been around some decades. things I've been involved with, with the veterans community.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, the ability to look up and call your congressman or congresswoman and tell them that you are really concerned about or excited about a particular program does have impact. I mean, at first I didn't think this was true, but I realized that when they start getting 50, 100, 1,000 messages about a particular topic that people are passionate about, they pay attention.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Maybe it's because they just want to get reelected. Maybe it's because they are genuinely concerned about helping people. I like to think it's the latter. But regardless of which, they run those messages up the flagpole when they bring issues.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I'd love your thoughts on something. You know, I'm so impressed that you were able to bring this from a study or set of studies to a much larger scale in Puerto Rico. I could be wrong here, but I feel like in the United States, we have such a culture of fame and popularity and reward around people who are extreme performers.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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We hear about these NBA stars, and right now we're seeing a lot about these incredible track stars, or we have these tech innovators that found huge companies. They used to be called unicorn companies, but all these incredible successes. And I wonder sometimes, if the hyper emphasis on these extreme performers has led to the conclusion in young people that unless you're going to be Michael Jordan,

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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or LeBron James, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, or win an Olympic gold medal, that the practices that feed up to becoming those sorts of people, like mindfulness meditation, or becoming a yogi for that matter, I feel like there's been a push towards hyper-specialization and performance to the point where people are writing off the incredible utility of

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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physical activity, mindfulness, you know, learning math, science, literature, and the arts. You know, you're talking about the arts. Yeah, music, right? Even for people like me, you know, I mean, sure, they always gave me the triangle because I could manage that one. And I don't want to insult the triangle players. I'm sure it's much more complicated than I'm giving the impression it is.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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But the point is that I feel like there's been a not so gradual disintegration of the idea that there is... utility, indeed, there's great benefit to doing things, not with the intention of becoming a high performer, but just doing them for sake of how it enriches us in a number of different ways, including our mental health.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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And I wonder whether or not the lack of PE is sort of a, well, if you're not going to run track and try and meddle or something or go to championship meets, then what's the point? But I certainly don't subscribe to that. I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Trust me, they often suffer in one or more of their other domains of life. Some don't. But I would argue most do.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I agree wholeheartedly. Let's talk about resilience. Earlier you said, you know, kids are not resilient. but you also implied, maybe you even stated it outright, that they can become resilient. What is resilience and what are some of the paths to resilience?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I have not, but one of my good friends and... colleagues at Stanford. Sergio Pasca is one of the world leaders in organoids, and we hope to host him on this podcast soon. But please educate us on organoids. They are oh so cool and oh so science fiction-y, but they are oh so real as well.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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What a spectacular study. Goodness. And if any of you missed some of the underlying mechanics, I'll just quickly recap. These organoids are little brains in a dish that came to be by virtue of taking fibroblasts or other cells. So skin cells essentially put into dishes provided for what are called transcription factors. These are the four transcription factors that, uh,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for identifying that reverts those cells into stem cells, and then a few other goodies, molecular goodies that then allow them to become neurons in particular, then they grow into little mini brains. And then, as Dr. Carrion was explaining, are exposed to cortisol at appropriate concentrations to mimic cortisol exposure in the whole person. And then from that,

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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The genomes of those cells and the epigenomes are analyzed to identify potential targets.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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The results are brought back to these kids in Puerto Rico such that the genomes of all these kids experiencing different levels of stress and yoga, mindfulness interventions or not, maybe they're in the control group, the outcomes can be assessed and then one can address, hey, what are the genes that are protective against stress?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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AKA what are the genes that are protective against high levels of cortisol? And a bunch of other, surely to be very transformative and important facts about how stress impacts the young brain to either give rise to PTSD or not. I must say, as you described that study, I had three thoughts. One, wow, how awesome is this that you can bridge across so many different levels of analysis?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, because you're talking about molecular genetics all the way up to yoga in school children in Puerto Rico and PTSD, you know, it's just a complex disorder. I was also thinking to myself, wow, what an incredible place Stanford is that such a collaboration is possible, right?

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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As you'll soon see, what makes Dr. Karian's work so unique is that it combines the psychological, the neurobiological, but also practical tools such as mindfulness. It relates mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy to the underlying biology and what's known about the psychiatry and psychology of PTSD at its different stages, depending on the trauma, the age of the person, et cetera.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8407.982

Makes me delight in the fact that colleagues like you exist and Sergio and forgive me the names of the other colleagues I'm not familiar with. Alex Urban and Caroline Perlman. Thank you. And the third thing is how important it is to bridge across these different levels of analysis.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8421.838

I think this is the first time on this podcast where somebody has discussed an experiment that bridges across so many levels of analysis, literally from fibroblasts, skin cells in a dish, all the way to a complex psychiatric condition and in an attempt, excuse me, to create novel therapeutics. So it's just truly spectacular. So if people are sensing a even further surge in my energy.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

844.881

I see. As you describe these other aspects of one's life that can have negative impact, poverty, violence, etc., I get the impression that PTSD can be caused by a single event or trauma, but that there's a cumulative aspect to it. So is it the case that in children, because their brain is far more plastic, we know this.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8445.628

This is the kind of thing that gets me so excited because in the landscape of science, we often see a study or we hear about organoids or we hear about a yoga intervention, and these things tend to exist in silos, in isolation, but the ability to bridge across these levels of analysis, I believe, is critical. And so, yeah, kudos to you for being a part of this incredible collaboration.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8490.943

I always say at Stanford, especially if two scientists meet for more than 30 minutes, what comes out of that is a collaboration. As a final question, I'm going to ask you to limit it to one answer, but I'm sure that there are many. The question is, if you had a magic wand,

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8512.603

And you could get any message out to the whole world about PTSD and PTSI, in particular in kids, in young people, but also in adults. What is that message? What do you want people to know about post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, and post-traumatic stress injury?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8596.63

Well, thank you so much for that. And Dr. Carrion, Victor, thank you so, so much for the work you do. Thank you for having me here. It's spectacular work at so many levels. It's also very bold and brave work to tackle such a big problem with such focus and to really give people agency.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8617.993

This notion of a custom toolbox, I think, is profound to give kids and adults, as it were, agency over their own interventions in an effort to really help themselves. I appreciate you coming here today more than I can express. I know the listeners and viewers of this podcast appreciate it as well. You are involved

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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with Stanford clinically, you're involved running studies, clinical studies that have great importance. So for you to take time to educate us with these tools is absolutely spectacular and is really appreciated. Please keep us updated on your progress and please come back and tell us more about that progress when the time is right. Thank you so much.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8684.605

Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

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I mean, brain circuits are modified even by passive experience in childhood, whereas in adulthood, it requires focused attention in order to learn, unless it's a negative event, for better or worse. that in kids it takes far fewer or less intense negative experiences in order to create PTSD because the brain is so plastic? Or is there a similarity between youth and adult PTSD?

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8700.953

For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8717.745

to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8740.529

If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8749.938

And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8762.711

If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8783.48

We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.

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How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

8802.357

And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Victor Carrion. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

973.681

Before we talk about therapeutic interventions, I'm curious about genetic predisposition. And a topic that comes up a lot anytime the letters PTSD are stated in that order is transgenerational trauma. I can imagine at least two forms of transgenerational trauma.

Huberman Lab

How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

994.394

One is a generation of what are now grandparents or great-grandparents or parents are impacted by some trauma, either in the family or maybe in culture or even broader scale. And then discussions about that past through generations impact the children and therefore their adult life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Stacey Sims is an exercise physiologist and a nutrition scientist and a world expert in all things training and nutrition, specifically for women.

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1045.031

Let's get people – sorry to interrupt. Let's get people up to speed on RPE because this is a term that's starting to circulate more outside the physical training community and to the broader kind of recreational exerciser community, which I consider myself part of. Me too now. I mean, I train regularly and have for years, but I'm not an athlete. I don't get paid to train and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1067.009

So reps in reserve, perceived effort. Let me just explain this. I think probably 95% of our listenership has never heard these terms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1092.571

So eight repetitions in good form and the person doing the exercise could, in theory... They really dug in there, grit their teeth, could complete two more repetitions in good form before hitting failure, the inability to move the weight anymore in good form.

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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Okay. But they're stopping at eight, so they have two reps in reserve.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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between men and women and their needs in terms of nutrition and training. But she is also exquisitely skilled at highlighting the data showing that there are specific areas of nutrition and fitness for which women and men differ and women have specific needs. So today you will learn what those are.

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1137.501

As opposed to looking at, say, percentage of one repetition maximum. Yeah. Saying you're going to move 70% of your one repetition maximum for six repetitions. Seems like that's a great thing as well, but it's a little bit more complicated because you need to know your one repetition maximum.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1153.915

Doing one repetition maximums can be dangerous if you're not skilled in that, especially with compound movements like squats and deadlifts. Okay. So is there an across-the-board recommendation for most people that they should – generally train their sets in good form to failure, to leave a couple reps in reserve? What do you suggest for, let's say women, but this could also pertain to men?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1266.004

Interesting. Lots to talk about in terms of exercise, but before we move on, if the bad situation is a woman fasting, drinking caffeine, and training intensely, but as you told us, not as intensely as she would be able to otherwise, what's the solution? I imagine that solution involves ingesting some fuel.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

128.426

and you will learn how to apply those specific protocols such that by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge about the biological mechanisms and the specific do's and do nots that can guide you towards your female-specific health and fitness goals.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1288.756

What is a good example of a, you know, a pre-training meal, if you will? And we could put some variation on that for people with different, you know, tendencies towards omnivore or vegan or whatever. But what is the timing of that meal relative to training that works best? And I'm assuming there's some flexibility there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1319.912

I've heard of people like you. Yeah. Meaning I tend to move slowly in the morning.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1331.872

Okay, so we're similar in that way. Yeah. So how do you square that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1432.548

As a neuroscientist, I find it so interesting that at least some of what you're talking about with this pre-workout meal and perhaps most of it relates to how ingesting those calories impacts the brain, protects those cispeptin neurons. And we'll talk more about cispeptin, very interesting peptide.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

144.682

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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As opposed to saying, okay, you need X number of calories because you're going to burn X number of calories.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1459.01

Which is a very different conversation. Here what we're talking about is the neural aspects of being able to generate intensity, also blunt cortisol, and get the most out of training without putting the body into kind of an emergency state.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1533.269

Right. And it has its own kind of elements of being laced with neuroticism about calorie counting and then that can drift easily into the realm of eating disorders. I did an episode about eating disorders some years ago and as I was researching that episode, I learned that people with eating disorders, women and men, especially anorexia, become like calorie calculators.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1557.854

Their eyes and their brain just are constantly evaluating the caloric load of food. And it can be obviously very intrusive. It's also the most deadly of all the psychiatric conditions. So that's a long way from hopefully what we're talking about here. But there's the opportunity for drift whenever talking about calorie counting in and out. Of course- believe in the laws of thermodynamics.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1580.018

calories in, calories out. But I love what you're describing here as getting the brain in a mode that the brain and body are protected so that one can invest in that high intensity exercise and get the adaptations that one wants, but not send everything down this pathway of just becoming a computer of how much am I exercising? What did I burn? What did I earn? Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1605.067

As long as we're talking about food and food intake relative to training, What is the suggested post-training window in which one should either avoid or make sure they get nutrition? Meaning how long does one have after, let's say, a resistance training session of about an hour?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1627.01

It seems to me that's what most people are doing if they're investing in resistance training, maybe plus or minus a what? 20 minutes. And they're hitting those high intensity sets where they have maybe just one or two repetitions in reserve, maybe going to failure on a few of those sets. What do you recommend women eat after they train?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

164.134

Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts and with several expert guests on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about one gram of high quality protein per pound of body weight every day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1729.388

So women should try and get 30 or as much as 40, maybe 50 grams of protein, depending on their age, post-training, within an hour of training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1742.341

men seem to have a longer window. They could wait an hour, two hours, maybe even three hours before ingesting protein. What about carbohydrate?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1799.249

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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Not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for overall metabolism and health. Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio. so that you can get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight easily and without ingesting an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1818.455

There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1826.198

Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1844.52

Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1861.836

It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1882.568

So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1899.797

They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. At some point, there was a lot of discussion about training fasted burns more body fat. I think now most people accept that that's not the case, that perhaps the percentage of...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1922.639

fat as fuel is increased when one trains fasted, but that overall in terms of loss of body fat. it doesn't matter if you train fasted or you train fed.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

1935.215

Okay. I think that can't be stated enough by experts like you. That doesn't mean that if one prefers to train fasted or with a minimum of food in their gut that they can't do that. I like to train fasted, but what I'm hearing is that women should probably ingest at least some protein, high quality protein, and maybe drink the protein in a protein shake form if they don't want to ingest solid food.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

201.825

I love their venison steaks, their ground venison, I love their bone broths, and I love their jerky, which is extremely convenient when you're traveling. Those Maui Nui venison jerky sticks have 10 grams of high quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2053.601

I know some men that basically don't eat all day and then eat one meal in the evening and they'll train in the morning. That's inconceivable to me because within an hour or so of training, I'm hungry, which brings to mind what we mean when we say training. I'm a big believer in people, everybody getting ideally to

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2072.446

or three resistance training sessions in per week and two, maybe three cardiovascular training sessions per week. That would be ideal. One could potentially do more, probably not a whole lot less before you run into long-term health issues that you could offset. But I think most people can fit those in.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2092.917

And I'm very frankly delighted that nowadays there's such a push for women and men to resistance train. That wasn't the case when I was growing up. I recall taking my sister to the gym for the first time and I think she was the only woman in the gym when we were in high school, except for a few female bodybuilders. And she said, well, I don't want to look like that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2112.014

And I said, well, don't worry, you're not going to look like that. But now you go to a gym and women are lifting weights, men are lifting weights.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2120.198

It's terrific.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2148.308

Yeah, it's awesome. As I mentioned before, I've had female training partners and they kill it. Yeah. It's a lot of fun to have a female training partner also because – not only is it cool to see the progress they can make really quickly, which surprises them often, you know, I think a lot of women think that, okay, it's going to require external androgens or it's going to, you know, and, and what,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2173.359

you pointed out that there are some barriers to women putting on mass quickly. I think I've noticed that strength increases can come really quickly. Why is that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

219.656

Responsible management of the access deer population on the island of Maui means that they will not go beyond harvest capacity. So signing up for a membership is the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2209.417

You're still doing that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2284.11

whenever somebody, male or female, is concerned about growing too big too fast, I always remind them that resistance training is unique among different types of exercise in that because of the blood flow to the muscle during the exercise session, the so-called pump, you get a window, a transient window, but a window nonetheless

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2306.161

of what the hypertrophy could look like if you do everything else correctly in terms of recovery. So provided that the size of the muscle during the training session is not aversive to you, you're okay. You're good. Which is unique among training. It's not like when you go running, you get a sense of being much faster. You actually get the opposite effect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2326.988

You feel the burn in your lungs and the pain of hitting the wall of your limits. And then hopefully if the adaptation takes place, then you can push past that next time. But with resistance training, you get literally a physical picture and a somatic feeling for what that hypertrophy could look like.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2350.107

So we've been talking about training, but we haven't really spelled out what you would suggest a novice... perhaps an intermediate resistance training, cardiovascular training program would look like in broad terms. I realize we don't have time here to get into all the nitty-gritty details.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2368.209

You've written about this elsewhere and we'll refer people to those terrific resources in the show note captions. But what would you like to see women doing? And maybe we can break up the age brackets because it sounds like this is something that is resurfacing again and again here. Women, let's say...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

238.792

Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2386.896

30 and younger women 31 to let's say 40 and then let's say 41 to 60 and then maybe 61 and on in terms of how many sessions of resistance training per week is it whole body training how many sessions of cardiovascular training and what sorts of examples could could you give

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2554.227

And just to remind people, compound movements, multi-joint movements, squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, rows, overhead presses, bench presses, et cetera, as opposed to isolation movements where only one joint is moving. Yeah. And for everybody in all those age ranges that you describe,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

257.607

One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2573.024

are you suggesting they train the same muscle groups three or four times per week, or they do some sort of split where it's upper body, lower body, take a day off, or upper body, take a day off, lower body, take a day off, whatever might work for them?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2656.311

Even some interesting literature about emphasizing some unilateral movements as people get older, not just dual limb movements or dual limb simultaneous movements. You always want to train both sides of your body, folks. So if I understand correctly, younger women should train to failure, try and generate strength and hypertrophy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2676.874

As women get older, they should emphasize more strength training, leave some repetitions in reserve, but train heavier. It makes so much sense what you're saying. Because what we know about the nervous system as we age is that there's some atrophy or at least some weakening of neuromuscular connections and the upper motor neurons in the brain that control the

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2698.151

neuromuscular connections in the spinal cord out to the muscle. There's something really sticky about this idea in terms of longevity that I don't think anyone else has ever said.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

27.071

In addition to working at Stanford and with numerous professional athletic teams, Dr. Sims has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed studies on exercise physiology.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

275.057

Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2835.091

For women who are not on hormone replacement therapy, and we did a previous episode about perimenopause, menopause, and hormone replacement therapy, but if it comes up again and again today, that would be wonderful because these are important under-discussed topics.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2851.039

For women that are not on hormone replacement therapy who decide to train heavier, maybe do a bit more training volume, not train to failure, they're making sure to not let their cortisol spike too much by making sure they have some pre-workout nutrition, some post-workout nutrition. Would they be wise to be very careful in how much cardiovascular exercise they add to that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2876.661

Meaning there seems to always be this risk of overtraining. And as you pointed out, for various reasons, cultural reasons, historical reasons, around exercise. My observation is that most women, unless they know better, default to cardiovascular exercise as opposed to resistance training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2898.13

So if a woman in her 40s, late 30s to let's say 50, is doing two to four sessions of resistance training workouts per week, and they also really like cardio or they feel they want to or should do cardio, should they be careful about how much cardio they're doing? And is there a best form of cardio? Should they really emphasize the high-intensity interval training? Should they avoid zone two?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

291.468

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2923.804

We should probably also define for people what zone two is if they don't already know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

2956.229

Is this things like soul cycle as well? Yeah. Okay. I've never done any of these. Yeah. But I imagine there's a lot of spinning, a lot of moving, a lot of sweating, and a lot of quote-unquote calories burned emphasis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

308.884

If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3103.413

I have family members who are women who are thin because they love to walk and they just walk a ton and they eat well and enough. but they are resistant to resistance training. And if they do pick up a weight, it's usually some very light dumbbells, do a few curls, a couple of tricep extensions, and aren't really leaning into the higher intensity work. I think this is pretty common.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3135.088

And my observation is that it's common, not because... They couldn't be incentivized to do the higher intensity work. But that learning the complex compound movements, like how to squat properly or even leg press properly, deadlift properly can be a bit overwhelming, especially when one walks into a gym. This is true for men too.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3157.442

Like all this stuff, all this equipment, all these bodies and these people look like they know what they're doing. It's like if I were to go into an advanced like kitchen or – symphony and all these instruments I don't know how to play. So what's the best line of attack for somebody who really wants to overcome this longevity barrier? Because clearly resistance training, proper nutrition work.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3181.049

And the cardiovascular exercise piece is a little bit more intuitive. Walking, you do it faster, you're jogging, you do it faster, you're running. The bike, the SoulCycle class, et cetera, it's easier in terms of the mechanics. One can still get hurt, but it's just more straightforward.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3196.761

Is there a way that in the absence of a budget for a personal trainer that somebody can learn how to do these movements and, as you said, ease into them over the course of even up to four months in a way that they can be confident that they're unlikely to get hurt and really build up their capacity to do real work that can benefit them?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

329.062

Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3325.671

I'm a big fan of machines, especially plate-loaded machines, but machines just create the close to correct or correct arc of movement. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3339.425

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3340.226

Yeah, exactly. And to really spend the time adjusting the seat height, adjusting the various pins on the machine, not just the weight, in order to make sure that one gets the best range of motion. I think this is something small, but that is significant in terms of its impact.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3355.822

People just plop down in a machine, especially if you're working in with somebody and feel, especially beginners will feel pressured to move quickly and they won't adjust the seat height. And so it's just all wrong for them. And all it takes is a little bit of time to, you know, and ask people, you know, how to adjust the machines.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3397.079

So you've mentioned polarized training. If I understand correctly, this would be a woman doing three or four days of high intensity resistance training for 45 to 60 or 45 to 75 minutes per session. And then at the opposite extreme, maybe just walking a lot or jogging a lot.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3417.177

So is that what you're talking about, polarized training, as opposed to these other forms of training where it's designed to get people sweating like crazy, breathing hard for long periods of time, but neither putting them in the landscape of inducing muscle strength adaptations and hypertrophy adaptations, nor really taxing the cardiovascular system enough to create an increase in longevity, for instance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

342.371

And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3440.577

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3503.188

I'd like to take a quick break to let you know that the Huberman Lab team has launched a new podcast with host Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy is an expert in exercise science and human performance, and has long been a fan favorite on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3516.914

This new podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin, and it dives into topics such as how to build muscle and strength, how to improve your cardiovascular health, and how to optimize recovery and sleep for performance and much more. Andy is an absolutely fantastic educator and true expert on all things human performance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3536.125

I know you'll thoroughly enjoy his new podcast and learn a ton of useful knowledge from it. So please check it out and give it a subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to podcasts now. Again, the podcast is called Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin. Let's talk about the menstrual cycle and how that impacts training at the level of psychology and physiology. And of course, the two are linked.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3559.703

They're inextricably linked. For instance, is there a particular phase of the menstrual cycle where a woman should expect that motivation and or recovery would be more challenging?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3595.422

So this is women who have, quote unquote, normal menstrual cycles, human ureic.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

36.636

She has not only evaluated existing protocols for nutrition and fitness that are specific to women versus men, but she has also developed many new protocols that are now in practice with professional sports teams, but that can also serve people who are generally interested in fitness and longevity, and in doing so, the general public. The tools that Dr. Sims shares with us today

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3605.789

And this is probably because these studies are being done on university campuses with college undergraduate women.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3612.213

Which typically is in a given age range.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

362.603

Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the waking up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3690.791

So for most women in the weeks before their period, they're going to feel more robust except right up until the point of menstruation or the inverse. Yes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3708.687

Got it, okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3762.782

So broadly speaking, the luteal phase is associated with more cortisol.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3767.361

more kind of baseline levels of stress. Would it make sense for a woman to try and offset some of that with a bit more nutrition during that phase, a bit more perhaps complex carbohydrate? We know that some complex carbohydrate can blunt some of the cortisol response, maybe just even a little bit more attention to eating.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

377.335

So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty. You never get tired. tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3871.676

How hard should a woman push through the mental and maybe even physical resistance to train less or not train during a given phase of the cycle?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

395.822

I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3967.35

On the flip side, if a woman is feeling spectacularly good, should she just really push it as hard as she can? Yeah. Is there anything about the relationship between the hormone fluctuations of the menstrual cycle and feeling really, really great that training hard can somehow disrupt the cycle? And this is actually kind of the old lore, probably myth, I would imagine, that –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

3993.314

high intensity resistance training is somehow detrimental to female hormone cycles. I don't think there's any evidence for that, but I hear that from time to time. Why do you think that myth came to be? Why do you think it propagates and what can we do to extinguish it if in fact it's not true?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4113.925

Wow. Very interesting history there. Is it true then that if a woman maintains either caloric balance with her basically eating enough to support her energy output or even a slight caloric surplus, that it's unlikely that her periods will cease even if she's training very hard and very often?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4138.411

So it basically boils down to calories in, calories out.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

415.071

Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Stacey Sims, welcome.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4195.208

appetite, body temperature, and hormones are very tightly linked.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4201.07

Far too tightly for us to disentangle all of those in a single conversation here. But as you're describing the urgent need for women to fuel enough with the proper fuels, to train hard enough to stimulate the correct adaptations that they need, I imagine that the shift in appetite

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4219.471

and body temperature that occurs across the menstrual cycle is also going to play into this, meaning there will be phases of the menstrual cycle where women will be just naturally less motivated to eat enough carbohydrate, enough protein in order to get the most out of their training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4234.286

What phases of the menstrual cycle are those so that women can pay particular attention to make sure that they're fueling enough?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

427.343

Our podcast, and I put out a lot of content about nutrition, fitness. cold exposure, heat exposure, hydration, topics that are very near and dear to your heart and for which you have a ton of expertise, but for which you have an extra degree of expertise as it relates to females specifically.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4341.779

Let's talk about one of the many third rails of discussions online, which is birth control.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4350.883

And we need to define exactly what type of birth control we're talking about because there are so many different forms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4356.386

There are IUDs, there are the copper IUDs, there's the ring, there's the, you know. Let's talk about oral contraceptives that... are designed to prevent ovulation. So this is quote unquote the pill. So we're being, let's for now limit the conversation to that so that there isn't confusion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4375.438

Share with us, if you will, your thoughts on these, how they impact any of the things that we're talking about or anything else from that, for that matter.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4384.073

Please.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

451.008

So I'm excited to talk to you today because very often I will get questions in the comment section on social media or on YouTube Was this study done in both men and women? How does it differ for men versus women? And on and on. And I rarely, if ever, have answers, but you have answers.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4643.251

OCs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4644.672

Or a contraceptive. And do you recall what the direction of the effect was on the amygdala? For those that don't recall, the amygdala bilateral brain structure, meaning one on each side of your brain – literally means almond in Latin, it's almond shaped, and it's part of a larger network associated with threat detection.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4662.479

Sometimes it's described the locus of fear in the brain, but it's involved in a lot of other things too, both positive valence and negative valence, but nonetheless is part of the threat detection system, elevated levels of arousal, which is why it's often discussed in the context of fear, anxiety, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

469.772

Great. So just to kick things off, because this is a question I get really often, fasting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

479.317

Intermittent fasting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

480.938

We need to distinguish between the two, of course. Yeah. Perhaps the most common question I get as it relates to males versus females is intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding, as it's sometimes called, an eight-hour feeding window, a six-hour feeding window, a 10-hour feeding window. Is that something that perhaps differs in terms of its impact and how well it works for men versus women?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4804.557

Is there any evidence that other forms of female contraception can be, let's just say, problematic for the types of things we're discussing today?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4814.191

Or IUD, copper IUD?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4857.149

Before we got started today, you mentioned some very interesting pioneering studies on evaluating menstrual blood itself as a window into some larger themes about what's going on physiologically, maybe even psychologically. Now might be a good time to just touch into that. We can always return to it again later. But let me just ask it more directly.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4883.835

What are some things that can be measured directly from menstrual blood that are informative for women? And it sounds like there's a new generation of at-home tests that might be interesting and informative for them to think about.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

4935.272

Can we talk about PCOS for a moment? Most people have heard of it by now, but polycystic ovarian syndrome, it's associated with typically elevated androgens. It's becoming more and more common or perhaps detected more based on better detection methods. I don't know which. The prevalence of PCOS seems to be very, very high.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5032.967

In the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of excitement in the neurobehavioral endocrinology fields, largely based on animal literature, but then expanding into human literature that certain forms of activities could change hormone patterns. Maybe even psychology. And that makes sense on the surface of it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5052.455

But is there evidence that if somebody engages in, say, high intensity training or competitive scenarios, this has been explored a lot in men, but I'm wondering if it's also been explored now in women. that androgens go up. I mean, there's been these studies, I don't know how good they are, of people on the stock exchange watching their stress fluctuations, measuring testosterone.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5077.099

I think most of those studies were done in men, but other competitive scenarios, even showing, for instance, that exogenous testosterone can increase altruism in men, if men are competing for who's like donating the most money at a philanthropic event.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5093.531

But you put them in a different scenario where it's far less benevolent in goal, and then they'll, exogenous testosterone drives competitiveness towards things that are more traditionally thought of as male-male competition. In other words, it's all context dependent.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5107.857

Is there anything that kind of springs to mind of interesting studies as it relates to androgens or estrogens in women athletes and as it relates to exercise?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5191.103

As we talk about menstruation, we should probably talk about iron stores and iron. Yeah. Do women need to supplement iron given that they lose iron during menstruation?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5285.351

If a woman is going to get a blood test to evaluate testosterone, estrogen, lipids, metabolic factors, et cetera, and she can only afford to do that at one point during her cycle and compare at various times, maybe every six months or once a year even at that specific time of her cycle, is there a best time in cycle to do that blood test?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5343.904

And if she can add a second blood test at a different phase of the menstrual cycle, where would you place that second test?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5359.314

And if she measures her hormones at those two times within the cycle, do you think that's sufficient to get... 75% plus of the relevant data.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5371.34

Terrific. Caffeine. Yes. In the old days, meaning when I was a kid and not long ago. Ten years ago. Three weeks ago. Yeah. We would hear that he's... crazy statements about caffeine. It pulls calcium out of the bones. You'd hear this stuff. I did a whole episode on caffeine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5391.596

I'm a big fan of caffeine, but I do warn people that if they suffer from anxiety or they're going through a particularly stressful life event, it can raise the activity of the sympathetic arm or the autonomic nervous system. You'll feel more nervous. You're more prone to panic when you're drinking caffeine. Many people love caffeine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5410.491

I think 90% of the adult population of the world ingests some form of caffeine every single day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5417.122

Likewise, making it the most consumed drug worldwide. Is caffeine safe for women? I suspect based on what you just said that the answer will be yes. But are there case conditions where women should be cautious about their intake of caffeine independent of this anxiety thing? I mean, people probably shouldn't drink more caffeine than they can tolerate psychologically.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5442.811

No one, male, female, young or old.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5509.347

Okay. I hear a lot that people who drink caffeine before a workout, you know, midway through, they're like, I don't feel good.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5518.573

For me, that just stimulates the desire for more caffeine. Or even, dare I say, a half piece of nicotine gum, which I experimented with. But I was told, and this is why I'm not going to continue to do it. Not only is it very habit-forming.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5533.57

It actually is such a vasoconstrictor that I was told by a dermatologist that it's terrible for skin, even if you're not getting your nicotine by smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing. So this big trend now toward ingesting nicotine as a stimulant and cognitive enhancer and performance enhancer, I think people should at least be aware of the negative effects on skin.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5560.198

I'll tell you that half piece of nicotine gum is... The first time you do it, it's an unbelievable experience. It's like your first real cup of coffee.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5573.859

Yeah, and dials you in. I recommend nobody do it because it feels that pleasant if you like caffeine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5582.089

Shishandra.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5584.671

Oh, I should know what this is.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5587.073

I should know. Well, I'm here to learn.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5589.976

Shishandra.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5623.51

Do you use it? Yep. Are you on it now?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5627.571

Okay. You just sent people down the rabbit hole of the internet. All right. Yeah, yeah. You heard it here first, Dr. Stacey Sims. I'm going to give it a try. Because the nicotine thing is an interesting one. And there are some cognitive enhancing effects of nicotine that perhaps in people 65 and older might actually be beneficial for offsetting some forms of neurodegeneration. But

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5650.675

That needs to still be explored and researched. Don't cut that and clip it and put it out there like so. That's happened already. Very interesting. All right. Caffeine, we both agree, is great. Shashandra?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5661.259

Check it out.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5662.359

All right. Will do. Cold.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5666.22

For reasons I still don't understand. People have associated me or this podcast with deliberate cold exposure. I like deliberate cold exposure in the form of a cold shower or a cold plunge or an ice bath, mostly for the effects that occur afterward, meaning more alertness, a kind of semi-euphoric buzz that goes on a long, long time.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5687.2

No, I don't think it increases metabolism significantly enough to have a meaningful difference. But the long-lasting increases in the so-called catecholamines, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine to me are pretty impressive. And I just like the way it makes me feel. So that's the main reason I believe why people do deliberate cold exposure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5708.074

And every time I do a post about deliberate cold exposure, I get asked, understandably so, How does it affect women differently than men? And then I usually get questions about Raynaud's syndrome.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5719.39

Yeah. So is there a difference in terms of how deliberate cold exposure impacts women? I have to imagine the answer is yes, given what you said earlier about vasoconstriction versus vasodilation. But deliberate cold exposure, like it, hate it. What do you think? Do you recommend it for women?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5748.027

So sauna?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5749.75

Hot tub.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5756.21

Thank you for saying that. I'm not a big fan of infrared sauna because it doesn't get hot enough.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5760.632

Yeah. You can bring an infrared light into a traditional sauna if it can tolerate the heat, but finished sauna would be what, something between 185 degrees Fahrenheit and maybe 210 if you're really heat adapted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5774.977

Oh, sorry. Yeah, you're living down in New Zealand now.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5780.02

Every time I've tried to do math on the fly on this podcast in my head. I know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5784.783

My brain's in a different processing mode.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5787.504

People can look it up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

58.232

are applicable to fitness, to changing your body composition and to overall health. Today we discuss how hormones and hormone cycles impact nutrition and fitness needs specifically in women of different ages. We of course discuss the menstrual cycle, perimenopause and menopause, but also female specific nutrition and training as it relates to things independent of hormones.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

580.706

Interesting. I didn't know that. Could you elaborate on more oxidative fibers, what that is and how it relates to metabolic flexibility?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5823.111

Which is chilly.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5824.772

It's not warm.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5925.776

I think some people might be confused by the idea of using sauna in order to reduce the hot flashes. So I'll just remind people that your brain has a set of neurons in the medial preoptic area that's sort of a thermostat, if you will, controlling core body temperature. And if you heat the surface of your body, your medial preoptic neurons say, oh, let's cool down the core of the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5950.825

Now, if you stay in that heat too long, your body temperature will go up. But conversely, if the surface of your body is made cold, the internal milieu of your body will heat up because those medial preoptic neurons will say, oh,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5964.636

This is like putting an ice pack on the thermostat, which is what graduate students and postdocs used to do in the lab side working because it was a battle over the heater, right? Some people were in hot, some people were in cold, so it was always this business. In any event, so it's not that you disapprove of using deliberate cold exposure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

5984.25

You just recommend that women do deliberate cold exposure with temperatures that are maybe in the low 50 degree Fahrenheit range as opposed to The really, frankly, just painfully cold for anybody, you know, 38 to, you know, 50 degree temperatures.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6065.885

Wow, fascinating. As a cautionary note, if anyone is going to explore Wim Hof type methods, please, please, please do not combine cyclic hyperventilation or hyperventilation of any kind with breath holds and water exposure, not even in the depth of a puddle.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6085.454

There have been drownings associated with people doing cyclic hyperventilation in various contexts, not just related to Hough breathing, but basically people who are not skilled and even some who are skilled combining cyclic hyperventilation, breath holds, and water in any form, cold or warm water. Bad idea. Just don't.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6103.482

If you're going to do any kind of cyclic hyperventilation breathing, and my lab's actually published on this in a clinical trial, do it on dry land or don't do it at all. And if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, limit your breathing to slow, deep breaths. Make sure that you're well supervised and just stay alive, please.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6130.543

Cold and temperature generally is such a potent stimulus. And it's exciting that people are starting to explore this, especially the, in my opinion, the sauna work. One thing I suppose that we should discuss very briefly before we move on, since we've been talking about resistance training. we've been talking about deliberate cold exposure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6149.153

There is evidence that doing deliberate cold exposure, not so much in the form of a cold shower, but in the form of a submersion up to the neck, post strength or resistance training, say in the four, but probably the eight hours after resistance training, because of the attenuation of the inflammatory response, which sounds like a great thing, it actually can inhibit some of the strength and hypertrophy gains that one would otherwise experience.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6172.444

So if you're going to do deliberate cold exposure, Best to not do it in the eight hours or even on the same day after resistance training geared towards developing strength and hypertrophy increases. No problem to do it first. In fact, maybe even some performance enhancing effects of doing it first. There's some athletes at Stanford doing that, but just want to throw that out there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6192.216

Is there anything else you want to add to that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6198.985

Get the vasodilation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6211.553

Oh, interesting. So after a good weight training session, if one has the luxury of doing it, get into the sauna for... Up to 30 minutes. Make sure you're hydrating.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6236.76

Ooh, so now we're getting into real performance enhancement. Is this true for men and for women? Yeah. Let's walk through this protocol. I like this. This has not been discussed on this podcast. Somebody does their resistance training, finishes up, drinks eight or 16 ounces of water with a little salt in it maybe, and then hops in the sauna.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6260.076

For how long?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6262.797

Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6264.338

No longer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6271.62

Okay. Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6272.649

um the ranges that i've seen published in the finnish studies are as i recall and i'll double check these numbers 186 degrees fahrenheit up to about 210 fahrenheit um and the higher end only being for those that are heat adapted yeah one can cover their head with a towel and actually feel more comfortable because the brain is insulated the surprises people they think putting a you know something on their head would make it

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6299.531

excessively warm, but you actually are protecting your brain from some of the heat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6318.315

And this stimulates the production of more red blood cells. Okay. Which then translates to what in terms of athletic performance?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6355.999

Okay. This is why when I go to Colorado, I'm gasping for air while I do a walk, but then I come back to sea level and I feel better. My endurance is better, but some people might not experience that effect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6386.058

So this explains why when I've gone to meetings in Colorado at altitude, some people can have a drink that first night and they're perfectly fine, even though they normally live at sea level. And I'm trying to see the stairs correctly, even though I don't drink.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6400.207

Very interesting. So you can use post-resistance training sauna exposure to improve performance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6444.969

Love it. Logically watertight and I'm going to give it a try.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6450.23

What other training tricks, tips do you have up your sleeve, Dr. Sims?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6457.292

Do you have any favorites besides that? I delight in these and I know other people will as well. Do any come to mind? I mean, you've taught us about Shashandra, about post-training sauna exposure to improve performance by increasing red blood cell count. Is there anything else that kind of springs to mind? No pressure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6500.484

Used to be ephedrine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6502.266

So I'm old enough to remember when they would sell it as the triple stack with ephedrine. Yeah. But some people dropped dead and they took it off the market. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6512.799

Did it really?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6514.181

It gets... You going?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6516.987

It's speedy. Yeah. It's dangerous.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6558.039

Should anything be done in terms of recovery to make sure that you offset that additional stress? that's achieved with this track stack.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6576.386

What about sleep? We hear so much these days about the importance of sleep for mental health, physical health, performance. I think this is a great thing, a great trend. Are there female specific requirements for sleep? that vary across the menstrual cycle and or by age or just generally, do men and women need to think about the need for sleep differently?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6753.14

That makes very good sense. We'll put a link in the show note captions to some zero-cost non-sleep deep rest yoga nidras. We've put out a couple with my voice, if you prefer another voice. I'm a big fan of the ones by Kelly Boyes, who's contributed to the Waking Up app. It also has terrific non-sleep deep rest yoga nidras out there, and there are others as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6774.189

You mentioned a few supplements, theanine. apigenin, which is chamomile extract. Maybe let's just have a general conversation about supplements. What's your thought on supplements? How do you place them into the landscape of nutrition? They are, after all, supplements, not replacements.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6790.898

But the word supplements, I believe, is a little bit misleading because there are food-based supplements, like a protein powder. There are supplements designed to achieve a specific outcome. And then there are supplements that are kind of a designed to be a more support for a bunch of things, kind of insurance policy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6810.598

What are some of your favorite supplements in any of those categories, specifically for women and perhaps even specifically during certain phases of the menstrual cycle and or perimenopause, menopause? I just threw about nine questions at you. All of them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6837.28

So five grams of creatine monohydrate per day, sort of typical? Three to five. Three to five?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6852.852

Interesting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6858.317

Like gastric distress? Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6869.127

Noted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6893.516

Sorry, I just want to stop you for a moment. As it relates to creatine, I hear two general lines of concern. One, I hear more often from women.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6903.964

My understanding is that because creatine brings water into the muscle, as well as supporting the phosphocreatine system of the brain, the water into the muscle component means, yes, people who take creatine, three to five grams per day, will gain a few pounds of body weight. That's solid body weight in the form of water within the muscle, so solid in air quotes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6926.324

It's water, but it's within the muscle. So they should know that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6933.714

Interesting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6940.325

Okay. And this is not bloat, like water, subcutaneous water. This is water within the muscles. Correct. So it will be stored within lean tissue. Correct. And then I do hear concerns about creatine causing hair loss. My understanding is there is zero evidence for that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6958.651

There is a smidgen of evidence that it might increase dihydrotestosterone levels, but it's like one study, marginal increase, and then people linked dihydrotestosterone to hair loss. And so then the conclusion people drew was that somehow creatine increases hair loss, but you're saying zero evidence.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

6996.408

Okay, so we've got creatine D3, 1,000 IUs per day, 5,000 IUs. I guess it depends a little bit.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7041.326

Great. Okay. So we've got creatine, vitamin D3. What are some of the other supplements that you take or that you I don't know if we say suggest, but that you perhaps suggest women consider.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7091.015

If these adaptogens blunt cortisol, because certain ones do like ashwagandha, which by the way, I do think people should cycle if they're going to take it high doses, right? Because there are some issues with liver- And thyroid. And thyroid problems if people take ashwagandha at high doses for too long. So that's important to note. But

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7112.406

Assuming that the adaptogens are reducing cortisol levels in addition to doing other things, is there a particular time of day or night that people should consider taking them? Should they avoid taking it early in the day? My understanding was that you want a bit of that cortisol bump early in the day, but you certainly want cortisol lower later in the day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7212.341

What's the story with pregnancy and training? Yeah. Is there an official word on this? Assuming a woman knows that she's pregnant from the very beginning of missing a period where she's in a position to make decisions about training or not training, training at a given intensity or not, what are your recommendations?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7323.837

I've been asked whether or not pregnant women can do deliberate cold exposure probably no fewer than 2,500 times on social media. And I never have an answer, but I always default to the cautious answer, which is please don't until you talk to somebody who actually has an answer. Just because it sounds like a very precarious situation, but in all honesty, I don't know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7348.022

I'm just biding time there and just saying, please go ask somebody who can give you a definitive answer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7419.454

But probably not extreme heat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7448.387

It's almost the inverse of what we know for males, which is if men want to conceive, they should avoid the sauna because we know that heat is detrimental to sperm viability in a real way. So much so that I tell... guys, if they are trying to get their partner pregnant, that they should bring an ice pack into the sauna. They should insulate that ice pack.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7471.214

Don't put it directly on the scrotum for other reasons, but that the negative effects of heat on sperm are real. But there's also an interesting... It's not just a trend. There's actually some research showing that cooling the testicles leads to increases in testosterone, which is...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7492.125

On the face of it, kind of counterintuitive because it turns out that it's about the vasoconstriction causing the subsequent increase in blood flow, increased vasodilation. So the inverse of what you just said, which is that during the heating process, the hypoxia induces more vascularization of the placenta. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7513.686

So when talking about temperature, one always has to think about the surface of the body versus the brain response, as we talked about earlier. And then what's happening during the deliberate heat or deliberate cold versus what's happening after the deliberate heat or deliberate cold, right? Everything in biology is a process, not an event.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7544.363

Thank you for the disclosure. I see it more as an indication of real knowledge. So thank you. This is an aspect of your training I knew a little bit about based on your publications, but I didn't realize the depth of knowledge. So we're all benefiting here, including this earlier protocol of sauna post-training. You can bet a lot of people are going to start incorporating that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7562.052

I think we might need to name that. I've done this from time to time, named protocols, because people are reluctant to name them after themselves. Maybe we call that the... the SIMS protocol or something like that. Anyway, your discomfort will be other people's benefit. Now seems like a good time to address some specific questions related to the age brackets that you mentioned earlier.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7587.163

In anticipation of sitting down with you today, I asked some different women that I know, you know, if you could ask the world expert in exercise physiology, hormones, and nutrition, et cetera, as it relates to women, one question, what would it be? And one of the most common questions I got in the 50...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7607.254

category was, what is the most efficient way for a woman older than 50 to train for the maximum healthspan and lifespan benefits?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7683.137

One-third?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7684.358

Goodness gracious.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

770.422

Super interesting. Two questions. Is there a protective effect of starting the eating window, and here I'm asking for both men and women, starting the eating window at, say, 11 a.m. or noon and ending it a little bit later? So not a six-hour eating window or seven-hour eating window, but extending that to 8 or 9 p.m. Under those conditions, do you still see the obesogenic effect?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7732.594

It's a few scrambled eggs. It's a chicken breast at lunch. It's a small steak at dinner. Plus other things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7760.097

I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about my mother who's 79 years old. She'll be 80 at the end of June and is in good health. walks a lot, gardens, does some yoga, but does none of the things that you're describing. So mom, please, I'm going to send her to listen to this. In the same vein, what about the women out there age 20 to, maybe we make it the 20 to 40 bracket.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7788.38

And if we need to divide that more finely, we can. What is the most efficient way for them to train for health, vigor, and longevity?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7938.834

Now, forgive me because you've said it several times throughout today's discussion, but I really want to drive home a key point that I think for most people, men and women, is not obvious but is really important. When you say high intensity, you don't mean a class or a run where you're drenched in sweat and gasping for air at the end necessarily.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7964.125

Let's disambiguate high intensity from what most people think of high intensity, which is a really hard workout, a tough class where they had me moving the whole time, doing a circuit, et cetera. What is the appropriate high intensity workout look like?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

7988.072

Okay. So 400 a lap. Yep. 800, two laps.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

80.92

For instance, we evaluate the evidence that women may not want to train fasted and the reasons for that. We talk about how training might vary according to different phases of the menstrual cycle.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8009.75

Pretty tough. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8011.151

Right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8083.646

And this is high-intensity interval training. This is not what you would consider resistance training for sake of building muscle or strength.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8089.97

You're using these loads, these machines, the pike hanging from the bar and bringing your knees up or L-sit or something as a tool to get the heart rate up continually. Very different than resistance training the way most people think about it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8128.368

On the rower, on the Airdyne bike, running if you like. Yeah, any of those things. The skier.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8136.89

So 30 seconds all out, then rest, what, 10, 15 seconds, repeat?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8157.555

Oh, nice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8193.59

And if I heard you correctly earlier, you are suggesting most women do one or two days of high-intensity interval training plus three to four days of resistance training for sake of building strength and muscle, which looks very different. It's more warm-up, do a couple –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8212.916

Work sets, you know, two to four work sets of, you know, an overhead press, two or four work sets of maybe a barbell curl, two or four sets of some dips or whatever one's, you know, personal choices. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Got it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8229.021

Very different, far and away different than what most people, men or women, are doing out there, which is a lot of Stairmaster treadmill jogging, maybe some lifting for hypertrophy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8370.868

And in terms of nutrition, you mentioned women should shoot for 1.1, 1.2 grams of quality protein per pound of body weight. What other types of foods do you like to see women ingesting? So are you a fan of fruit?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8390.197

Great. Well, these days you sort of have to ask in these circles. Vegetables. Yep. Fiber is important.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8397.941

And then in terms of starches to replace glycogen, especially if people are doing these high-intensity interval training sessions and the resistance training, what are your preferred sources?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8415.796

Ooh, I cringe at that stuff. But, you know, I prefer rice and oatmeal. And I like a really good sourdough bread with butter or olive oil.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8435.745

Because GLUT4 levels are so high, you're basically pulling everything into glycogen at that point anyway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8495.236

And there's some data that chocolate is good for us, especially the low sugar, dark chocolates.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8503.928

Right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8504.769

Yeah. One has to live. Yeah. And fats. Where do you like to see women get their fats from?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8569.244

That all sounds very rational and delicious, in my opinion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8576.846

I think if people hear it from you, they'll do it. I think people just need to hear it in the context of a non-diet context. And you've done an amazing job today of explaining how nutrition fuels training, training fuels changes at the level of the muscle, the liver, et cetera, that allow one to ingest more fuel.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8596.831

In fact, a lot of what I'm hearing is that women should probably ingest more quality fuels in order to offset these cortisol spikes and feel better while training and to train more, which everyone agrees, provided it's done properly, is great for us. Kind of a fun, hopefully fun question for you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8613.668

If you had a magic wand and you could get all the women on earth now and going forward to make a change or changes, you don't have to pick just one, in terms of nutrition, how they think about their hormone cycle, exercise, healthspan, lifespan, what would it be?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8677.921

Well, Dr. Stacey Sims, this has been tremendously educational for me and I know for everybody listening and or watching. You've taken us on an amazing tour of the best ways to train with cardiovascular training and resistance training. those tailored specifically for women, as well as touching into some protocols for both men and women that are immensely powerful.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8700.987

Talked a lot about the menstrual cycle. I get asked about the menstrual cycle and how it relates to training and vice versa so many times. And thank you for providing clear, actionable answers. And you've also educated us on caffeine supplements and including revealing some supplements that I didn't know existed, which is not a common occurrence for me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8724.423

And many wins, many, many wins, thanks to you, and on and on. So just such a rich data set here presented with such clarity and in an actionable way. On behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to say thank you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8740.536

I know you've come a very long way from the other side of the equator, not just to see us, but given that your time is so precious that you've come to visit us and share with us your knowledge. I just want to say a really deep, heartfelt thank you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

8754.849

And we'll have to have you back again. Maybe we'll come to New Zealand.

Huberman Lab

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Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. To learn more about her work, please see the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Regular listeners of this podcast will know this, but just to remind everybody, a sympathetic state has nothing to do with emotional sympathy. It's the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which drives more arousal and alertness and at higher levels, stress, sometimes called the fight or flight response.

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So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter,

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Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

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Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.

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as well as protocols for fitness, which we call the foundational fitness protocol, includes everything, sets, reps, cardiovascular training. Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide us your email. But I should point out, we do not share your email with anybody.

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stacey Sims. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Parasympathetic being the other arm of the autonomic nervous system, sometimes called the rest and digest response. arm of the autonomic nervous system. They work sort of like a seesaw or a push-pull, pick your analogy. In any case, it sounds like intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding, unless it's very well aligned to the circadian rhythm, is not going to be advantageous for women.

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And we discuss how women can design nutrition and training programs that are optimized for their specific needs, not just because they are women, but because they are women of a particular stage of life and women with particular goals. As you'll soon see, Dr. Simms is exquisitely skilled at explaining the human universals of nutrition and training. That is the things that do not differ

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That's what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing that if a woman trains while fasted, so in the non-feeding window, so wakes up, maybe has some hydration and trains, that's going to further exacerbate the stress response in a way that's not going to be good.

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And I have to imagine that if she also is drinking caffeine in order to do that training, because caffeine is a stimulant of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, that it will further exacerbate all these issues. So this is a eye-opener for me because I've had female training partners for years. I don't eat until 11 a.m.

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I like to hydrate and caffeinate before I train in the morning, and then I like to eat starting around noon. Several of them have hopped on that schedule with me. Some of them eat breakfast first, some of them don't. They do as they choose, of course. But now I'm thinking that's probably the worst way to go.

Huberman Lab

The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing microplastics. Microplastics are an extremely interesting and important topic that everyone should know about.

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So they're getting deposited in the lower lungs. You can find them in the bloodstream from a blood draw. You can find them in human placenta. And you can find them in what's called the meconium, which is the first stool that a baby takes. This is typically taken within the, or the stool is given, given, taken. It's taken by the doctor. It's actually analyzed for various things.

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It contains bile and a bunch of other things. It's actually an important indicator of the health of the child. It turns out that this first stool that happens in the first 24 hours or so after birth, when that's been analyzed for microplastics, There too, you find microplastics and nanoplastics.

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And that's really got people concerned because what this means is that microplastics and nanoplastics that mothers are ingesting or that they somehow have lodged in their bodies are making their way to the fetus. Now you could say, well, is it really a problem? Well, a few years ago, it was at least concerning enough that

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BPAs, and we'll talk more about BPAs, bisphenol A, which is a component of microplastics. This is a known endocrine disruptor. It disrupts certain estrogen-like pathways. We'll get into this in a few minutes. Bisphenol A and BPAs were banned from sippy cups in kids and from any food containers for young kids.

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So the FDA in the United States, and there are European countries as well, had enough data on this or enough concern about this to say, listen, we are going to make it illegal to have BPA lined sippy cups or food containers for young kids, in part because the BPA is correlated with microplastics and nanoplastics. So what I'm saying here is that

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The government has taken pretty avid measures to restrict the amount of BPA exposure through microplastics and nanoplastics to young kids. And yet the fetus clearly is being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics.

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And I don't want to be alarmist. Today's episode is not about getting you to be petrified or about developing some sort of hypochondriasis about It's designed to inform you about what they are, where they exist, where they exist in particularly high amounts, and the things that you can do to limit their impact on your biology.

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This is why at the beginning I mentioned, if you are pregnant or if you have young kids, or if you are a young kid, you want to go out of your way to limit your exposure to these microplastics and nanoplastics. But if you're an older adult, you probably want to do the same. And we'll talk about ways that you can do that.

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So I could go on and on about the various tissues besides placenta in your bloodstream, brain, testes, follicle, lower lungs. You can find nanoplastics in the liver. You can find microplastics and nanoplastics in pretty much every tissue that you look for them. The real question is how detrimental are these microplastics and nanoplastics?

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And then of course we can talk about where they're coming from specifically in ways that you can control and limit. And when I say control and limit, what we're really talking about here is Yes, trying to limit your exposure to these things.

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If I were to rattle off the different sources of microplastics and nanoplastics, you would go wide-eyed and you would probably also just say, okay, I surrender, they're truly everywhere. In fact, I'll do that, okay? I can't help but do that. But keep in mind, you do have some control in terms of the, end result of these microplastics and nanoplastics on your health. So here I go.

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Plastic bags, storage containers, bottle caps, rope gear strapping, utensils, cups, floats, coolers, containers, rope, fishing nets, textiles. Sorry, I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing because it's just pretty much everywhere.

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Latex paint, coatings, medical devices, automotive parts, tires on the road, degrading, giving off little microplastics into the air, microplastics raining down from the sky, literally. pipe film containers, laminated safety glass, car windshields, oh great, even the car windshield, drinking bottles, textile fibers, resins, paints, varnish, construction automotive parts.

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Okay, so basically everywhere, right? These things are everywhere. So what are we to do? Well, what we are to do is to limit the long-term accumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics in our system. There are ways that we can limit their introduction to our system, but as long as you're breathing, as long as you're walking around, as long as you're near a road, you are exposed to microplastics.

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So until there's a huge movement to make better tires that don't degrade as quickly or to create filters in our home environments that remove the microplastics, which frankly, I think both of those things are not reasonable expectations, at least not in this lifetime. Well, until then, what you can do is you can try and limit their entry and accumulation into your body.

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So rather than list off all the ways that you can limit so-called bioaccumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics at the beginning or at the end of today's episode, I'm going to intersperse them at times that are relevant to what I just discussed about how microplastics get into our system and the tissues they are lodged in.

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So I'll tell you right now that a few ways that you can really do yourself a service in limiting your exposure to microplastics is to limit your consumption of water from plastic bottles. Okay, that might seem kind of obvious, but check out these data. This is pretty wild. There was an analysis of the number of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in bottled water.

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And it was estimated that there were about 30,000 of these particles per liter of water, okay? And those data stood for quite a long time. Then imaging techniques for measuring the number of these different particles, in particular, the really small nanoparticles, the ones that are less than one micron in diameter, the imaging tools for those improved.

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Because I think it's fair to say that we are not going to rid the earth of microplastics. They are just too pervasive. Now, the one caveat is that there are certain populations of people in particular people that are pregnant or people that have young children and those young children themselves that should really strive to limit their exposure to microplastics.

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And I'll explain a little bit about that in a moment. And there was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024 that showed that the amount of nanoplastic in particular, but microplastic and nanoplastics that are present in bottled water was actually vastly underestimated in that previous study.

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Rather than 30,000 particles per liter, the reanalysis with better methods showed that it was anywhere from 110 all the way up to 400,000 particles per liter. And the average was 240,000 particles per liter. So that means that the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics in bottled water is actually much, much higher than we initially thought.

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And a very simple way to limit your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics is to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles, in particular plastic bottles that have been heated up. Now you might say, well, I don't heat up my plastic water bottles.

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Right, but you don't know what happened to those plastic water bottles en route to the store you bought them at or en route to your refrigerator, right? They could have sat in the back of a hot truck. They could have sat in the back of a loading dock. any number of different things.

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Now, this is not to say that if you drink the occasional water out of a plastic bottle that you're going to harm your health. I'm absolutely not saying that. However, it's pretty clear that there's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that are completely avoidable, at least avoidable in terms of your ingestion of them in plastic water bottles.

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So it makes sense to me why you would want to avoid those. Also as a consumable, that's not very reusable. I suppose you could reuse those plastic bottles, but most people don't, at least they don't use them for very long. They get pretty flimsy pretty quickly.

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you're much better off having either a stainless steel bottle or some sort of ceramic mug or using glass or using some other vessel for water that is reusable. And of course that is not made of plastic. And then of course the question arises how much microplastic and nanoplastic is in tap water. And it turns out, There's quite a lot of it.

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Now it varies according to location, but there are ways that you can get those microplastics and nanoplastics out of your tap water. The best way turns out to be a little bit expensive, admittedly, and that's to use a reverse osmosis filter. So reverse osmosis filters will get rid of all the microplastics and nanoplastics. Of course, it will also remove some key minerals from the water.

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So you'll have to remineralize that water. If one looks at the price of reverse osmosis filtration systems, They're not cheap. They can range anywhere from 300 to 500, even $600 for a home unit. And many of those units will remineralize the water. So basically it takes the water, cleans out the microplastics, nanoplastics, and a bunch of other bad stuff that you don't want.

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And then it's going to remineralize the water so that you're getting enough minerals in your water. Now, if you look at the cost of a reverse osmosis filter, I, like you, kind of go a little wide-eyed, like, oh, that's a lot of money for water.

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But if one thinks about the total amount of money one spends in a given year on plastic bottled water that we consume and then, you know, throw away essentially the bottles or even bottled water from glass bottles, I've gotten in the habit of trying to drink water from glass bottles.

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And when you go out and you buy those, you feel better that you're not consuming a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics, but They are very expensive. So the costs probably line up pretty well.

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So by the end of today's episode, you can be confident that you'll understand a lot about what microplastics are, the impact that they are currently having. some of the potential impact that people are starting to investigate and ways that you can limit their negative impact on your brain and bodily health.

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And when I did that analysis, I realized, well, actually the home reverse osmosis filter with remineralization actually will save on costs provided that one is good about filling glass bottles or stainless steel bottles with that water and making sure to, you know, when you leave the house to take those bottles with you.

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Again, I don't think it's possible for everyone to avoid all consumption of water from plastic bottles. That's just not reasonable. to expect. Right. You don't want to be that person that's carrying around water everywhere you go to friends, houses at dinner, et cetera. I don't think we need to be that concerned about the amount of microplastic and nanoplastic in water sources.

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And certainly you wouldn't want to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles to the point where you dehydrate yourself or put yourself at risk. I'm not trying to create that kind of concern here.

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What I'm trying to say is if you are concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics and you really want to limit your exposure, one of the best ways to do that is to limit your consumption of water from plastic bottles.

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and because microplastics and nanoplastics are present in tap water, you're going to need some way to remove those microplastics and nanoplastics from your tap water if you're very concerned about them. I'm not here to say everyone should do this. I'm certainly not saying that.

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I'm saying that if you are concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics, and we'll talk about some of the reasons one might want to be concerned about them, well then installing a reverse osmosis filtration system on your home water might be a good idea. And it's likely to save you costs if you look at it in comparison to buying disposable bottles of water.

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Now, there are a lot of other ways besides drinking water from plastic bottles microplastics and nanoplastics make their way into our system. And I can list off many of them, but I'm trying to create a hierarchy here of the things that are potentially the major sources and the ones that we can most easily avoid and that are likely to save us costs overall.

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So one thing that's very clear is that there's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics in sea salt. Who would have thought? But then you think about it and it's like, well, this stuff is getting out into the ocean. There's a lot of plastic in the ocean. It's a super depressing scene when one sees the pictures of all the plastic floating out there.

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In fact, there's a book that I read in preparation for this episode. Gosh, it was so depressing, but important for me to read. Maybe you want to read it as well. It's quite good, although it will be a bit of a downer. The title of the book is A Poison Like No Other, How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon. And

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Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element.

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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

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I listened to this book and gosh, it really convinces you that there's microplastics everywhere, both on land, in the air and in the ocean, unfortunately. And of course, sea salt comes from the ocean. So a simple solution to this is if you're going to use salt and I'm a big fan of salt, not overdoing it, but salt has its role, right?

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It's a wonderful substance, both for sake of taste and for sake of health. I did an episode about salt. Again, don't over consume salt. Don't blast your blood pressure. Don't blow a gasket, but many people would do well to have a little bit more salt, especially if you're eating a really clean diet, especially if you're hydrating very well.

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Focus on something like pink Himalayan salt or salt that comes from a non-marine source, okay? It's very simple to do. It's some of the best salt out there. It's not terribly expensive. and you would do well to avoid sea salt and get your salt from those other sources. In doing so, you're going to lower your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics.

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There's some pretty scary pictures of sea salt under the microscope and all the little bits of plastic that are in there. And you only have to see those pictures once or just hear it from me to make the shift to Himalayan sea salt. And the pink salt is pretty, it looks nice, it tastes great. So that's an easy, very low cost shift that you can make.

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

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In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

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And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

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I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. Okay, so we've talked about bottled watered sources and filtering your water. We talked about sea salt.

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Another major source of these microplastics that was very surprising to me is from the lining of canned soup. I don't think I'm ever going to eat canned soup again unless I absolutely need to. Sorry, canned soup companies, but there was a study, the study was entitled, Canned Soup Consumption and Urinary Bisphenol A, a Randomized Crossover Trial.

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Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

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I'll describe a little bit more about what bisphenol A is a little bit later, but bisphenol A is a known endocrine disruptor. It mimics estrogen in ways that can activate or block estrogenic pathways. So it messes up hormone pathways, either by activating them or blocking them. It can also bind to androgen receptors potentially and cause some issues there. Bisphenol A or BPA is not a good thing.

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Turns out there's lots of it in the lining of Soup cans. The reason is soup tends to be a little bit fatty. So even if you get the nonfat soup, it tends to have some lipid in there and it also has some acidity to it. And the lining helps maintain the flavor and the freshness of the soup in those cans. In this study, what they did is they gave people either fresh soup or canned soup for five days.

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Then they did a so-called two-day washout where they took a break from soup and then they reversed the conditions. I'll cut to the chase here because the conclusion of this study is wild.

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What they found was that consumption of one serving of canned soup daily over the course of five days, here I'm quoting by the way, was associated with more than 1000% increase in urinary BPA, in bisphenol A. Now that's urinary BPA, so people are excreting it. I want to emphasize that. but a thousand fold increase in BPA from canned soup. I don't know.

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I'm not alarmist, but I only have to read this once. Think about my love of canned soup. Not that great, done. I'm not eating canned soup again, unless I'm absolutely starving and I need some soup very, very badly. My suggestion would be, unless you have a powerful reason to consume canned soup, don't consume canned soup.

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The one caveat being that if you can find canned soup that does not have any BPA, that is it says no BPAs on the container, well then go at it, have as much canned soup as you want. I should be very clear that a lot of canned products now say no BPA, but they contain other endocrine disruptors and the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics in those soups is still unknown.

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So part of my hidden motivation of this episode and perhaps the motivation of other podcasters in the health space that are talking about microplastics now, and by the way, Dr. Rhonda Patrick did a really wonderful podcast about microplastics just recently. We didn't coordinate. That's why we both ended up doing it roughly at the same time. We talked about it afterwards and chuckled about that.

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Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

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I guess, you know, we're both interested in some of the same themes, of course. One of the perhaps hidden agendas is that some of these food manufacturing companies and beverage manufacturing companies will start to include more thorough descriptions on their labeling of what is and is not contained in the various products such as canned soup and water, et cetera.

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not just no BPAs, but hopefully some of the other things that are problematic that we'll talk about in a moment, such as BPS, which is another endocrine disruptor. So if you see no BPAs, sometimes there's still BPS in there. Okay. We'll talk about BPS as well as phthalates, which are something that make plastic and other containers more durable and more flexible.

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And phthalates have been discussed by by people like Dr. Shana Swan, who will soon be a guest on this podcast and has shown up on other podcasts talking about how phthalates are known endocrine disruptors in development and likely in adulthood as well. I guess my push for you to never consume canned soup again might be a little bit harsh. That's just my decision. Here's what I'll do.

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I'll make a bargain with the canned soup companies. If you all start putting a more thorough description about what is and is not contained in those soup cans, all right, not just no BPA, but is there truly also no BPS? Are there no phthalates, et cetera? Then maybe I'll make the move back to canned soup.

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And of course, most of you have probably heard that you're not supposed to microwave plastic containers. Now, you'll see microwave safe on a number of different containers. That just means that it's not going to melt in the microwave. It does not mean that you aren't being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics and BPAs, BPS, phthalates, et cetera.

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So in general, it's a good idea to avoid putting any kind of plastic into the microwave, at least if you're going to microwave food and then consume that food. The other surprising, at least to me, source of BPAs and BPSs, so these endocrine disruptors and microplastics and nanoplastics that's very robust is paper cups.

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Goodness gracious, I would have thought paper cups are safe, but you know those paper cups that you put hot liquids into and they often have a plastic lid? Well, even if they don't have a plastic lid on them, the lining of the paper cup, which makes those cups durable,

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when you put hot liquids in there, like hot coffee or hot tea, well, that contains typically, unless it says no BPA and no BPS, it contains lots of BPA and BPSs, microplastics, nanoplastics. And so putting hot liquids in there, actually there was an analysis that showed that if, liquid that's heated up to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit is put in those containers. It starts to leach out.

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It starts to pull those microplastics, nanoplastics, BPAs and BPS from the cup linings. So the other day I went across the street and bought a cup of coffee. Of course they sold it to me in a paper cup. And I thought, oh goodness, I forgot to bring my mug and my travel mug, my stainless steel mug or my ceramic mug. Did I not purchase the coffee? No, I'd already ordered the coffee.

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I didn't walk back. What I did is as soon as I got back, I took the coffee and I poured it into a ceramic mug. So I'm not extremist. I'm not somebody who's going to completely avoid these things, but in the future, I'll try and remember to bring my mug over. Some places even give you a little discount on your coffee. So again, these are cost-saving approaches.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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You're certainly limiting or reducing the amount of waste that you're creating in the world. So that It can only be a good thing, okay? And the plastic lids, probably a good idea to avoid drinking through those plastic lids too often. Again, I want to emphasize, I'm not one of these people that's going to freak out about drinking a hot liquid through a plastic lid.

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These microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere. We're consuming them all the time. We can remove them from our body. And later we'll talk about ways that you can accelerate or increase the amount of removal of them from your body.

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If we're just a little bit more conscious about how they get into our body, and we're a little bit more conscious about the elevated costs and the elevated amount of trash that's going to recycle into landfill and so on, probably a good idea to just bring your mug with you, your travel mug with you, try and make those mugs and travel mugs ceramic, stainless steel, or some other vessel that doesn't contain BPAs or BPSs.

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Before we move on to talk about what happens when microplastics and nanoplastics make it into say the testicle or the brain, like what the consequences of that is and are, I want to just briefly return to something that I flew past a while ago. And that's the analysis of microplastics and nanoplastic particles that are in bottled water.

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Remember, initially it was thought to be 30,000 particles per liter. Then later it was discovered using better techniques that it's actually more like 240,000 on average particles per liter. how did that huge discrepancy in data arise?

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I realize this is not a data analysis discussion, but I want to talk about this just briefly because it illustrates for you something really important about science, which is as tools for measurement get better, so does our understanding about what's going on in our brains and bodies. And it's a very simple and kind of cool thing related to the light. So you could imagine that the first paper,

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And the reason is microplastics are indeed everywhere. They are in the air. They are in beverages we consume. They are lining the inside of soup cans. They are lining the inside of paper cups made to hold hot water, coffee, and tea. And there are a lot of animal data and indeed some human data showing that microplastics, which consists of particles of different sizes,

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was looking under the microscope at a drop of water taken from a bottle that was plastic, and then imaged the number of little plastic particles in there. You'd say, well, there's a particle, and there's a particle, and there's a particle, and there are tools that can count those particles. Well, what if you have two particles that are really close together, right?

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If you recall, microplastics are anywhere from one micron in diameter, all the way up to five millimeters in diameter, but nanoplastics are less than one micron in diameter. So how do you know that when you see a clump of stuff under the microscope in that drop of water, that you're looking at one big piece of plastic

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versus thousands and thousands of little pieces of nanoplastic, or even just much smaller pieces of microplastic. Well, it has to do with what's called the point spread function, and I don't really want to get into this in too much detail, but basically when you shine light on something, you get kind of a little hill of light, if you will.

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There's a peak at the center, and then it had drops off with distance. The reason why the numbers jumped from 30,000 to 240,000 is not because the researchers got much better, it's because the tools got much better, okay? There are new imaging techniques and I'll put a reference to this for those of you that are into this kind of stuff.

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Element has a lot of different great tasting flavors of Element. My favorite is the watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry and the citrus. Basically, I like all the flavors of Element. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix.

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entitled Rapid Single Particle Chemical Imaging of Nanoplastics by SRS Microscopy. Okay, pretty nerdy stuff, but it's fun if you're interested in light and how light can illuminate things and show detail or not detail.

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But basically what we're realizing is that there are a lot more particles of plastic in different tissues, in different things that we're ingesting, et cetera, because we're getting better and better ways of separating those clumps of light into lots of little clumps of light and realizing, oh, that looked like one particle, right? Remember it's particles per,

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It's not one particle, it's 10,000 particles. Now you might say, okay, well, what's the difference between a bunch of little particles and one big particle? Ah, there's a big difference. What's the big difference? Little particles can make it across barriers that big particles can't.

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These little nanoparticles of plastic are especially concerning because those are the ones that you find in greatest abundance.

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or I should say among the plastics that you find in different tissues, the ones that are in greatest abundance in the brain, the testes and the follicle, again, these tissues that nature and evolution have gone out of their way to protect with these very stringent barriers, like the blood brain barrier, like the blood testicular barrier, like the blood follicle barrier.

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Those are the ones that are getting across because they're very, very small. They can sneak through the little holes in those biological fences. They're getting deposited in those tissues, brain, testicle, and follicle, and they're staying there at least until people die, which in the case of the analysis of post-mortem tissue is many, many decades later, okay?

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So I'm not just raising this discussion about ways to disambiguate large particles from small particles just to be nerdy and technical. it turns out to be a really important issue with real biological implications. Okay, so lots of itty bitty little pieces of plastic getting their way into tissues like brain, follicle, testes, liver, lung, et cetera. What are some of the implications of this?

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Now, there are a lot of animal data, data in fish, data in mice, et cetera, that have explored how microplastics and nanoplastics can disrupt any number of different biological functions. but it's probably worth looking at how nanoplastic and microplastic accumulation in specific tissues is correlated with specific health detriments in humans, even though the data are correlative, right?

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It's much harder to get causal data from human studies because the animal studies, frankly, are hard to translate to humans. In this case in particular, because a lot of the features of animal biology, while similar to human biology, humans are animals, but you get the point, they don't correspond so easily when looking at microplastics and nanoplastics for the following reason.

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Let's say you have a little fish, that fish is a couple centimeters long, and it turns out there's, I don't know, about an aspirin's size of microplastics and nanoplastics in that fish when that fish is analyzed post-mortem. You say, okay, well, that's kind of a lot, right? An aspirin's worth in a, or an aspirin size batch of microplastics and nanoplastics in that little fish.

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And then you look in humans and you realize, okay, well, there's more microplastics and nanoplastics, but not that much more. how much of a detriment is there really going to be?

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Can you look at the study in the fish seeing, for instance, and this has been demonstrated that you have disruption in neurological pathways, the formation of those pathways, like brain development is altered, reproductive function is altered, et cetera. It's hard to translate. We don't really know what it means in terms of humans.

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Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.

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So we'll turn to the correlative data in humans and I'll look to the strongest data, at least that I could find out there. And there are kind of three major cases that I think are worth highlighting. The first one is that There was a study done in humans. This was published in 2021.

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It was published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology that found much higher levels of microplastics in the stool samples of people that were diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome is very disruptive to people's wellbeing.

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There isn't an obvious cure for irritable bowel syndrome, although some people find relief by improving their gut microbiota, by limiting body-wide and gut inflammation through any number of different things, improving sleep and eating a low inflammation diet, et cetera.

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This is something that I'll probably cover in a future episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast, gastrointestinal challenges, that is. So I want to be very clear, there was no direct causation established, but it was established

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that there were higher levels of microplastics found in the stool tissue coming from people who had irritable bowel syndrome than in individuals who did not have irritable bowel syndrome. And while no study is perfect, they included a number of important controls in the experiment to control for age range and some other features.

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So it's reasonable to assume that the accumulation of microplastics in the gut or somewhere along the GI tract had somehow led to or related to irritable bowel syndrome. Okay, now you could also imagine the reverse. This is very important to understand.

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You could also imagine that people who had irritable bowel syndrome perhaps are less good at filtering microplastics and nanoplastics from the food and liquids they consume than are people who don't have irritable bowel syndrome. So the causality, if it exists at all, could run in either direction or both. Nonetheless, I think it's an interesting study.

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And if you're somebody who suffers from gastrointestinal distress, such as irritable bowel syndrome or otherwise, I think you'd be wise, indeed all people would be wise, but I think you'd be especially wise to take into consideration some of the to-dos and not to-dos that I'm covering during today's episode, such as avoiding consuming water from plastic bottles, some of the stuff we talked about earlier, avoiding canned soup and other BPA, BPS-containing substances.

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containers and things of that sort, or things that come from those containers. The other area where there was some really interesting correlative data relates to reproductive function and hormone health. And this is where we can start to get into a bit more detail about BPAs and BPSs and phthalates and some of their roles in disrupting endocrine, that is hormone pathways. So there's a study

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I'll put a link to in the show note captions that's entitled urinary phthalate metabolites are associated with decreased serum testosterone. So that's in blood in men, women and children. Okay. This is an interesting study for a number of reasons. First of all, it emphasizes something that everybody should know, which is that testosterone plays key roles in men, women, and kids, okay?

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It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise, which of course I also do every week.

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It is not the case that testosterone is just present in men and boys. It's also present in women and girls, and it plays an important role in everybody, okay? It's involved, of course, in some of the things that we normally associate with testosterone, such as muscle mass, bone density, strength, et cetera, but testosterone can be converted to estrogen.

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Testosterone is involved in libido in both men and women. It's involved in brain development in boys and girls. in genitalia development and on and on. So it's an important hormone. And it was clear from this study that elevated levels of phthalates, that is phthalate metabolites, are associated with lower testosterone levels in all those populations.

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They point out, quote, that the strongest and most consistent inverse relationships between level of phthalates and testosterone, that is elevated phthalate metabolites, lower testosterone, were found among women ages 40 to 60 years. And this is very important. If you saw the episode that we did with Dr. Mary Claire Haver on perimenopause menopause,

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She emphasized that perimenopause menopause, which typically sets in somewhere between one's late 40s and 60s. Okay, there's huge variation there, sometimes as early as one's 30s. That would be early, however, more often in one's 40s and 50s, sometimes as late as 60s. involves reductions in estrogen, but also in testosterone.

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And this has major implications for creating less feelings of vigor, lowered libido, less recovery from exercise and other life stressors and things of that sort. Now, the study also interestingly shows that quote, adult men, the only significant or suggestive inverse association between phthalate metabolites and testosterone were observed among men 40 to 60 years old.

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Now, there are a number of different ways that we can interpret those data. One is that men younger than 40 have high enough levels of testosterone that, or the ranges of testosterone are great enough in that sample of younger than 40 years old, that somehow that was able to swamp out any reductions in testosterone.

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that were caused by phthalate metabolites, or rather that once men get from 40 to 60 years old, that there's somehow a vulnerability of the testosterone pathways to phthalates, or, and none of these are mutually exclusive, of course, that the phthalates had built up in those men's system over a number of years, and then were having their major effects on those men between 40 and 60 years old.

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I do find it interesting that the major effects were observed in both men and women 40 to 60 years old. And the interpretation of those data that makes the most sense to me at least is that there's a cumulative effect of these phthalates over time that reveals itself at least statistically in men and women once they reach 40 to 60 years. So what are these phthalates?

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Well, these phthalates are things that are included in plastics that house liquids and foods that we eat or that we cook with. or that simply exist in our environment and are getting broken down and that we're inhaling and then are making their way across the blood testes barrier, blood follicle barrier, or into any number of other tissues.

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Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's.

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Those phthalates are there, of course, to make plastic more flexible and durable, but they are known endocrine disruptors. Dr. Shana Swan has done beautiful work showing that young animals and potentially humans who are exposed to phthalates from things like pesticides in particular can actually have a, fairly major disruption in what's called the anogenital distance, okay? Withhold your chuckles.

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The distance between the penis and the anus in people that have been exposed to phthalates or mothers of boys that have been exposed to phthalates, those boys are born with a shorter penile to anal distance, okay? Typically it's of a certain distance and there's a correlation with reduced anogenital distance that is a external marker, okay? It's not that that itself is necessarily a bad thing.

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That's not what we're saying here, but that's an external marker that can be measured in mice. And there are some studies that are exploring that in humans as well, that correlates with a number of other things, including lower sperm counts, reduced sperm motility, and things of that sort. Likewise, BPAs, the bisphenol A and B, are known endocrine disruptors.

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I talked about this a little bit earlier. They're known to bind to estrogen receptors. So they mimic estrogen. Sometimes they activate those estrogen receptor dependent pathways. So they literally mimic estrogen. sometimes they block those estrogen receptors so that estrogen cannot have the normal role of docking in those receptors and causing their normal functions.

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And BPA and to some extent BPS and potentially phthalates can dock to androgen receptors as well, sometimes referred to as testosterone receptors, androgen receptors. So the point is that BPAs, BPSs, and phthalates are not good for endocrine function and they are present in basically all plastics, unless it says no BPA or all phthalates removed, they're present in herbicides, et cetera.

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And they're of real concern. And it's very clear, as I mentioned earlier, that you can detect microplastics in human testes. And I didn't mention this earlier, and in semen, and it is now very clear that that's correlated with reduced sperm counts and lower sperm motility. Now, I also want to be very clear. Remember, I'm not an alarmist.

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I want to be clear that just because sperm counts are significantly lower in people that have a certain amount of microplastics and nanoplastics potentially in their testes or that they've been exposed to does not necessarily mean that they're infertile.

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It is true that total sperm count and sperm motility, forward motility being an important indicator of sperm health, are correlated with one's ability to fertilize an egg. This was covered in a quite long, but quite detailed episode that I did about fertility in both males and females. There are a number of things one can do to increase sperm counts or to at least limit sperm count.

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And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise. Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals.

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There are a number of things that one can do to improve sperm motility. I encourage you to check out that episode. I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions. In fact, I'll link to the specific timestamp in the show note captions that gets to those particular strategies. But the point here is that

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Microplastics and nanoplastics are found in human testes and that's correlated with reductions in sperm count and reductions in sperm motility. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

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While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

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Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

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Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

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Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

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I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

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Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

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With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Okay, let's talk about microplastics. What are microplastics?

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Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

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Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,

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Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Another study that got people's attention that I think is worth mentioning, which relates to microplastics, nanoplastics and cardiovascular disease.

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This was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2024. So this is a fabulously good journal. And what it found was that polyethylene, which is a component of many plastics out there, were detected in the carotid artery plaques of, in this case, 150 patients, which is approximately 58% of the ones that were included in the study.

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And they also found using a technique called electron microscopy. Today's fun because we get to talk about different types of microscopy. Electron microscopy allows you to look at things that are smaller than a micron. You can look... all the way down into the nanometer range, right?

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You can start breaking up that one one thousandth of a millimeter into nanometers, and you can start to see things that are really, really small. And in this study, electron microscopy showed that there were these jagged edge foreign particles among the plaque macrophages of these cardiovascular plaques, okay? Macrophages are part of the immune system.

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These are cells that go in and try and eat things up. They're kind of like little ambulances. Later, we're going to talk about microglia, which are the brain's resident microphages, or microphages, depending on where you live and how you like to pronounce it.

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But the point here is that when using a technique like electron microscopy that allows you to look at really, really small stuff, it was very clear that the plaques that form these Now basically occlusions within the arteries, these are not good. This is one of the reasons you want to eat properly and do cardiovascular exercise and take great care of yourself, et cetera.

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Electron microscopy made very clear that there were little plastic foreign jagged particles deposited in some of these plaques. Now, were they the cause of these plaques? Did they contribute to some of the occlusion caused by those plaques? Unclear.

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it's reasonable to assume that they form part of the physical substrate that could occlude blood flow through these arteries, which of course leads to cardiovascular events, which of course are not good. So I'll put a link to this study in the show note captions. Again, these are correlative studies in humans.

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Microplastics, as the name suggests, are little itty bitty bits of plastic. How itty bitty? Well, microplastics range in size from one micron, which is one one thousandth of a millimeter all the way up to five millimeters in diameter. Okay, so anything in that size range is considered a microplastic.

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Correlative studies are only that, they're just correlative, but I'm trying to provide a patchwork of things that suggest that it would indeed be a good idea to try and limit your ingestion, or at least facilitate the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics from your system. Another reason to do that relates to the so-called PFASs, okay?

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These are a group of chemicals sometimes referred to as the quote unquote forever chemicals, because they are very long standing once they get into your system. These things have names other than PFAS, which is an acronym, things like perfluoroalkalo, things like polyfluoroalkalo.

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I don't know how good my pronunciation of those is, but if you look up the PFAS, you'll see that these things are known to cause liver damage. They can damage the immune system. They are considered forever chemicals because they are not broken down. They last forever. Then again, some of the other components of microplastics and nanoplastics are also known to last forever.

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So you're starting to get a picture of these little tiny bits of plastic, some tinier than others, depositing themselves in our tissues. They're everywhere out there. They are most prominent in certain sources, but they're going to get into our system. Now, does that mean that we can't get rid of them? No, we absolutely can get rid of them.

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In fact, we have a number of different ways that we get rid of toxins and foreign invaders in our body. Some of those include the immune system, right? Even if you have just some sort of foreign object, like a splinter, your immune system has a reaction to that.

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Typically you get some pus around it, some inflammation, and that pus and inflammation is part of the process of isolating that foreign intruder, that splinter, and then eventually creating some tissues that extrude it or allow you to extrude it.

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You of course also have what's called your adaptive immune system, which doesn't just react to the presence of something foreign, but creates antibodies, which can combat that and so on and so forth. So your body has these frankly miraculous ways of dealing with foreign intruders of different sorts.

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but it does seem that microplastics and nanoplastics can deposit themselves in their tissues and stay there. Does that mean that you don't have any chance of getting them out? No, you have a liver. Your liver, yes, contains microplastics and nanoplastics, very likely if you've been alive for any amount of time,

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has what's called phase one and phase two detoxification processes that allow you to break down and get rid of certain foreign products, including microplastics and nanoplastics. So let's talk about liver detoxification and some of the things that can facilitate liver detoxification that you actually have control over. Okay, so let's talk about liver detoxification.

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The liver is such a cool organ. It does so many cool things. It's not just about detoxification, by the way. It does all sorts of things related to blood clotting. It's just an amazing, amazing organ. We should probably do an entire episode about the liver and not just eating liver. I'm not a fan of eating liver. I do it every once in a while because I'm told it's nutritious.

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But let's talk about the living, functioning liver. There are two types of liver detoxification processes. So this is not about detoxing your liver. You may hear about detoxing your liver. That's a whole other discussion that I don't want to get into, at least not here. There's type one and type two liver detoxification.

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Anything smaller than that, so anything smaller than one micron in diameter, one 1,000th of a millimeter in diameter is considered a nanoplastic. And indeed, there are lots of microplastics floating around in the air. There are lots of nanoplastics floating around in the air. There's lots of both of those things in the ocean. There are a lot of those things in food, especially packaged food.

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Okay, there's type one, so-called phase one liver detoxification is also called the oxidation phase. It involves something called cytochrome P450 enzymes. Okay, so enzymes are involved in the breakdown of different things. It converts toxins into less harmful components that ideally are excreted from the body, okay? Type two or phase two liver detoxification.

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Again, this is not detoxification of your liver. This is detoxification by your liver. is also called the conjugation phase of detoxification. It involves enzymes that attach molecules to toxins. It makes those toxins water soluble and easier to excrete from the body. in the form of urine. It neutralizes reactive intermediates from phase one.

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So phase one and phase two detoxification work together. During phase two of liver control detoxification is where toxins are broken down and those broken down components are prepared to be removed from the body. It is thought that the liver plays a primary role in the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics. BPAs and BPSs. And by the way, I realized I didn't say this earlier and I should have.

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These BPAs and BPSs are sometimes chemical components within the microplastics and nanoplastics. They sometimes attach themselves to the microplastics and nanoplastics. I should have said that earlier, forgive me. The microplastics and nanoplastics can act as what are called vectors or carriers of things like BPAs, BPSs, phthalates, and forever chemicals, okay? I should have mentioned that earlier.

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So type two, that is phase two of liver control detoxification is where these toxins that are in the body and potentially these microplastics themselves and nanoplastics themselves are not necessarily broken down because some of those things can't be broken down, but where they are prepared to be excreted from the body.

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And we have some degree of control over phase two of liver controlled detoxification. Again, I'm calling it liver controlled detoxification so that this doesn't get misconstrued as detoxing your liver, which frankly is a very controversial topic and may not be possible at all.

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Although simply by saying that I'm probably going to get attacked, but here we're just talking about your liver's ability to break down and remove things from your body that you frankly don't want in your body.

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One way that you can enhance phase two liver control detoxification processes is by increasing your intake of something called sulforaphane, which is present in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower. Now, is there enough sulforaphane in cruciferous vegetables such that you could eat reasonable amounts, that you wouldn't have to overeat cruciferous vegetables in order to get this

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of phase two liver detoxification processes? Potentially, yes. The animal studies that were carried out, so this would be in rodents like rats, used supplemented sulforaphane at dosages that were comparable to the amounts of sulforaphane that a human might ingest from a large serving of broccoli or a large serving of cauliflower. So this could be a few cups of raw broccoli or raw cauliflower.

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Although frankly, if you're like me, that basically translates to gastrointestinal distress. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a party and there's some like, you know, broccoli and cauliflower, maybe with some dip or something like that. I usually avoid the dip because I'm not really into dips, but we'll have a few pieces of broccoli and boy, does that disrupt my gut?

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I don't know about you. And most things don't disrupt my gut. That's not something that I, struggle with. I prefer to cook broccoli and to cook cauliflower. If you cook broccoli and cauliflower lightly, okay, so you don't just, you know, turn into a complete mash. You don't boil it such that a lot of the nutrients are leached out into the water around it.

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There are a lot of those things lining cups. There are a lot of those things in everything that we consume, essentially. So what does it mean to have all these microplastics and nanoplastics floating around in our environment and going into our body through fluids and foods, et cetera?

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So if you do sort of a light boil or a steam or something like that, or you pan cook it, maybe in some olive oil. This is making me hungry, by the way. you'll still maintain the sulforaphane in those cruciferous vegetables, meaning it'll still be beneficial to you. Now, some people, including me, don't tend to eat that many cruciferous vegetables. I don't know why.

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I just somehow don't make it a point to shop for them enough. I ought to. For people like me, or perhaps you're in the same boat, you can supplement with sulforaphane. And what you'll find is that it's sold by various companies and it's available at a quite wide range of dosages. You'll see, for instance, two products similarly priced. One product will contain 50 milligrams of sulforaphane.

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The other product will contain 225 milligrams of sulforaphane. Now, if you go to what I consider a really excellent website for thinking about and evaluating this kind of stuff, which is examine.com, I've talked a lot about this on the podcast before. On examine.com, they talk about the translation of the rodent studies to humans. And here's what they say.

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They say supplementation of 0.1 to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of sulforaphane in rats has been noted to be bioactive. Okay, just bioactive. They're not getting specifically at removal of microplastics or nanoplastics. And they translate that to a human dose of, okay, if you're 150 pound person, then that's going to be anywhere from 1.1 to 5.5 milligrams for that 150 pound person.

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If you're a 200 pound person, that's approximately my weight. I think right now I'm sitting somewhere around 215. a hundred kilograms, 215, I don't know, somewhere in there. I haven't stood on a scale in a while. It's 1.5 to 7.2 milligrams for a 200 pound person. Now, then you think about the typical dosages that are found in supplements of 50 milligrams per serving

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versus 225 milligrams per serving. And in either case, you realize that that's much, much higher than what's being discussed here. So what that says to me is that I would probably go with the lower dosage. Although according to examine.com, they say, quote, these low quantities are likely attainable through raw broccoli or cruciferous vegetable products. So that's great.

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What this means is that you don't need to supplement with sulforaphane if you're willing to eat raw broccoli. They're specifically saying raw broccoli. or other cruciferous vegetable products, while higher dosages may be further beneficial. So this is still a bit of a vague space. I realize there's some discrepancies in what I'm describing here.

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Well, there is some serious concern because these microplastics potentially can disrupt cellular health, organ health, and could potentially lead to certain forms of disease. We'll talk about the ways they could potentially do that. However, I want to also emphasize that your body is incredibly good at dealing with foreign invaders. It's very good at getting rid of stuff that isn't good for it.

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I said you could lightly cook the broccoli or cauliflower. That's my read and understanding of sulforaphane, that it's not broken down at low temperatures, but perhaps you just decide to eat it raw if you can bear it. I can't, so I don't. You could supplement it if you choose what dosage. Well, that depends on your weight.

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And it seems that in any case, most supplements are going to more than cover the amount of sulforaphane that's described here, translated from the rat studies. So in my case, after researching this episode, I opted to start taking 50 milligrams, five, zero milligrams of sulforaphane per day. I'm going to see how that goes. I guess.

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It's fair to say that I'm sufficiently concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics, given that I'm 49 years old. All my biomarkers seem fine, but hey, I'm always interested in doing something for my health or to promote my health, that is, if I can. And it's pretty clear to me that if one's thinking about liver control detoxification, both for sake of offsetting or removing

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BPAs, BPSs, but also other potentially toxic metabolites from microplastics, nanoplastics, and other environmental factors that taking 50 milligrams of sulforaphane per day perhaps can be beneficial. So I don't think it's necessary for everybody.

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In fact, I think everybody should probably be getting some cruciferous vegetables in their diet anyway, at least once a week or a couple of times a week. So if you're not interested in supplementing, that would be the route to go.

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If you are interested in supplementing, I'll provide a link to this particular location in the examine.com page so that you can translate some of these dosages to your potential sources of supplemental forms of sulforaphane. The other way that microplastics and nanoplastics can be excreted from the body is in the bowel.

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And one way to potentially increase the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs, phthalates, and forever chemicals, those PFASs from your body is to make sure that you're getting enough dietary fiber. Now, most people can do that simply by eating a fair amount of fruits and vegetables, which I always make a point to do. I also ingest starches, okay? So I'm not pure carnivore.

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things like rice, like oatmeal. I like fresh pastas, although it's mainly rice and oatmeal for me these days in terms of starches. Plenty of fruits and vegetables. That's something that I just really make it a point to do. Why is fiber good at doing this? Well, it can bind lipophilic molecules, okay? It can bind molecules that are able to cross cell membranes.

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And earlier we were talking about the fact that BPA and BPSs mimic estrogen and combined estrogen receptors and potentially to androgen receptors as well. Keep in mind that one of the reasons why those so-called steroid hormone pathways, I know people hear the word steroid and they think performance enhancing steroids, but no, it turns out that testosterone and estrogen are both steroid hormones.

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One of the reasons those are interesting is that because of their structure, they're able to bind cell surface receptors and have effects on those cells. They are also able to pass through the hormones. Here, I'm not talking about BPAs and BPSs, but the hormones, testosterone, estrogen, can actually get to the nucleus of cells and can control gene expression.

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These steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen, work in a very coordinated fashion to create what we call secondary sex characteristics, which are the characteristics of the external body and brain changes and internal changes all over the place, ovaries, testes, et cetera, are what underlie what we call puberty. And that's because these molecules can actually control gene expression.

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However, microplastics and nanoplastics have been shown to lodge within specific tissues and stay there for long periods of time. So you'll notice during today's episode, I'm going to go back and forth between the stuff that's really scary and then reassuring you that we're not sure whether or not we need to be that scared about these microplastics and nanoplastics yet. Okay.

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So when we talk about these molecules like BPAs and BPSs impacting these pathways like estrogen and androgen pathways, this is serious stuff because what you're doing is you're potentially activating or blocking pathways that are involved, not just in the function of those cells, but actually the genes that those particular cells express.

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And this is particularly concerning for any kind of hormone dependent cancers, right? perhaps not surprising to you based on what you now know about how hormones work with gene expression, et cetera, that many tissues that turnover cells a lot, such as the testes, right, producing sperm pretty much throughout the lifespan, the follicle and eggs, right, breast tissue, right?

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These are common sites of cancer, okay? There are other cancers that can form, of course, in other tissues like the pancreas and brain, et cetera, but tissues that turn over quite a bit because of the involvement of the cell cycle and because cancer is, among other things, a dysregulation of the cell cycle and an overproduction of cells that we call tumors.

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Those are pathways that are particularly vulnerable to endocrine or hormone disruption. And this is why there's additional concern about microplastics and nanoplastics, perhaps increasing cancer rates in particular in tissues like the ovary, in particular the testes, in particular any tissue where there's a lot of cellular turnover. So the point here is that

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eating broccoli, eating cauliflower, potentially supplementing with sulforaphane, here I'm summarizing a bit what I talked about earlier, avoiding drinking water from plastic bottles, maybe getting a reverse osmosis filter, avoiding those diabolical canned soups.

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I had no idea about these canned soups or ensuring that the canned soups that you're eating are safe in the ways that we discussed earlier, avoiding sea salts, avoiding, I'm throwing a few other things in here that I haven't mentioned yet, avoiding nonstick pans, trying to cook mainly with cast iron or ceramic and making sure that those are BPA, BPS, and PFAS free.

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Just look at the packaging, do a little bit of homework there and get this one. This is a really surprising one, or at least was surprising to me. Carbonated water, okay? Mineral waters. A few years ago, there was an analysis of different popular forms of carbonated water, which is sold in glass containers, okay?

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It turned out that Topo Chico, which I happened, past tense, happened to love, Topo Chico, had 9.76 particles per trillion of these PFASs, these forever chemicals, okay? That was an analysis done in 2020. Perrier, 1.1. San Pellegrino, 0.31. So we're comparing 9.76 versus 1.1 versus 0.31, which tells me I'm avoiding Topo Chico. I might even avoid Perrier. I'll probably drink San Pellegrino.

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I'm probably buy a Perrier and drink a Perrier every once in a while. I'm not crazy about carbonated water. By the way, this was an analysis by Consumer Reports, and it caught some attention such that the Coca-Cola company, which makes Topo Chico, said that they were going to fix this problem. And they claimed, okay, I don't know if they've done this, all right?

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I don't want to get the folks at Coca-Cola angry with me. Coca-Cola claimed that by 2023, they were going to cut the amount of these particles in half but that would still make them 4.5 parts per trillion, still much higher, at least four times higher than any of the other brands. So I have to be direct. I'm just speaking from my own experience and choices.

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What I want to do is give you the evidence so you can decide how much effort you put into limiting your exposure to these microplastics and nanoplastics and how much effort you put into trying to rid your body of them. Okay. I'm not here to paint the picture one way or the other, because frankly,

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until I see data that Topo Chico has reduced the amount of these foreign contaminants to basically less than 0.31, I'm going with San Pellegrino or Perrier.

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Okay, I don't tend to drink a lot of mineral water, but given that you're ordering it in the glass, in a glass container that is, given that these things are not particularly cheap, right, and that you have choices, you could either decide to avoid carbonated water altogether or,

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If you're going to be smart about it, you probably want to avoid the ones that contain more of these foreign contaminants because of their ability to get lodged in different tissues in your body. So that was very surprising to me that you would have these forever chemicals in carbonated water. What it tells us is that the water going into those products contains either microplastics, nanoplastics,

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PFAS is from other sources or something. And so I think that we should all be aware of this. If you're going to drink carbonated water, probably going with a Perrier or San Pellegrino would be better than going with Topo Chico, because even though they've halved amount of these forever chemicals in there. It's still quite high.

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Okay, so I've mentioned some to-dos to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic, BPA, BPS, and PFAS exposure, such as ingesting cruciferous vegetables, potentially supplementing with sulforaphane, trying to avoid drinking out of plastic water bottles. There are a few other things I'll just list off here to keep it relatively short. I talked about making sure you're getting enough dietary fiber.

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I talked before about using a glass or steel vessel in reverse osmosis water, using Himalayan salt, avoiding sea salt. The other thing that you can do, oh, and I mentioned using cast iron and ceramic as opposed to nonstick cookware whenever you can.

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And if you're going to microwave food, making sure that you're doing that on plates or in containers that does not or do not contain plastic of any kind, even if it says microwave safe. The other thing is to sweat, okay? We vastly underestimate or downgrade the power of sweating. Sweating is an incredible mechanism.

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Now, I realize that as soon as somebody says, sweating is a great way to remove toxins from the body, that a bunch of people out there get really inflamed, pun intended. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that there are a number of different ways for foreign products to leave the body, including urine, feces, but including sweat, okay? So I'm not saying that's going to detox you completely.

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the data just don't line up with one argument or the other, that they're extremely dangerous or that they're nothing to worry about. Let me give you an example of something that you might've heard in the media and on recent podcasts out there. Very scary.

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That's not what I'm saying, okay? I don't fall into that camp. However, there are a number of beneficial aspects to sweating. And also there are a number of beneficial aspects to doing the things that make you sweat. So I've done entire episodes about deliberate heat exposure.

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So things like sauna done anywhere from once a week to four times a week, pretty impressive data in terms of reducing all cause mortality, improving cardiovascular function. It's also for most people, pretty pleasant to sit in a sauna. If you don't have access to a sauna, taking a hot bath, not so hot that you burn yourself, but a hot bath that also will activate some of these same pathways.

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things like hot yoga, things like going out for a run in a hoodie, trying to get your body to sweat pretty robustly at least once a week is a good idea for all sorts of reasons. Also just your ability to thermoregulate. By the way, for those of you that don't sweat much, sweating is actually something that you can get better at. That's right. You can get better at sweating by what?

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By sweating, by exposing yourself in safe ways to heat. And I talk about that in the deliberate heat exposure episode. We also have a newsletter on deliberate heat exposure. I'll put links to those in the show note captions. And those explain safe ways to encourage sweating. Why am I talking about this?

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Well, sweating may help remove some of the things that are attached to microplastics and nanoplastics that can act as endocrine disruptors. It's very, very unlikely that the microplastics and nanoplastics would actually be removed as whole particles in sweat. I think that's very unlikely, frankly.

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What's more likely is that the microplastics and nanoplastics aren't really getting removed from or broken down within our body at all. They're getting lodged in these different tissues, but the stuff that's on them and in them is potentially causing some of the biological harms that we've talked about. And so removing those more robustly is what sweating is about.

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It's what consuming cruciferous vegetables is about and so on and so forth. So those are a few more to-dos. The other two don'ts, or I should say don'ts, are things like avoiding consumption of packaged food or food that's packaged in plastic. Now, this is tough to do. I love berries, for instance. I love blueberries. I'm what you call a drive-by blueberry eater.

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If there's blueberries in a bowl, I just kind of like sweep them up by the fistful. So if there are blueberries on the counter, you're probably not getting very many. I'm getting most of them. I love blueberries, but I noticed that I was starting to accumulate, and of course I recycle those blueberry containers that are those plastic containers.

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The argument based on what seemed to be a pretty high quality publication that you may have heard is that every single week we ingest up to a credit card's worth of microplastics and nanoplastics. You might've seen that in headlines and in other podcasts. And indeed there was a paper arguing that.

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One way that you can avoid plastic packaging is go to farmer's markets, bring your own bags, bring your own baskets. I love that the farmer's markets, they have those cardboard containers. Of course, some of you may be shouting, wait, but those are colored green and the coloration is a problem and they have the microfibers with the, true, but probably better than

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plastic containers that they use now in the grocery store for pretty much every fruit and vegetable. OK, so solution is either farmers markets or trying to bring your own bags to the grocery store. I know this is starting to sound kind of, you know, hippy dippy, but, you know, these little things make a big difference over time.

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You're reducing your plastic waste, you're reducing the amount of plastic exposure of the fruits and vegetables you eat. This can correspond to a real difference in the number of microplastics and nanoplastics and the bad stuff that comes with them that you ingest. And again, Most of the time, these things are going to save you cost as opposed to introduce new costs.

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The other don'ts that we haven't talked so much about are to reduce the number of clothes that you purchase. I know this might seem like, oh my God, where's this all going? But it turns out that one of the major sources of microplastics and nanoplastics are the microfibers on clothing that come off in washing machines that then get distributed into the oceans through the water.

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that escape into the air. There are a number of ways that you can trap those. There are the things like the Guppy Bag that you can, I love the name, the Guppy Bag that you can buy at pretty low cost. You can find those easily online that will trap some of that stuff. There are filters that you can put within specific washing machines.

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Some places actually require this now that capture those microfibers. These microfibers, when I first heard about them, I thought, oh goodness, are we really talking about microfibers in clothing? Well, just, I don't know, wear 100% cotton clothing. But then you find out, because I read this book, this scary book and it is scary.

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It does kind of bum you out when you start reading this stuff that when you read a poison like no other, how microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies, you find out that so much of the waste that exists in landfills is clothing that people have discarded. And there was nothing wrong with that clothing. The clothing has dyes, it has little microfibers.

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This stuff gets into the environment, gets into the oceans. Here's the simple solution to all this. It turns out that we replace far more clothing than we need to.

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Okay, this is actually a great relief to me because I love few things more in terms of clothing anyway, the feeling of a t-shirt that I've worn many, many times and it's really, really soft and kind of worn down, that kind of distressed look t-shirt, even though that might be fashionable to some people, to some people it's not, I love the feeling of a really worn down, soft t-shirt.

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even the ones that have a little bit of, you know, sort of jagged toothing along the collar. Now, some people might loathe that. They only want the pristine t-shirt that, you know, is super crisp. That's not me. I know I own a few of these black button down shirts and indeed, the same ones, I use them over and over again.

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However, a more recent paper looked at the quantitative analysis they used, used a different quantitative analysis and claimed that they vastly overestimated the amount of plastic that we ingest every week. What do I mean by vastly overestimated?

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can be very detrimental to our health. At the same time, it's important to realize that as of now, we don't have any causal data linking microplastics to specific human diseases. That said, there's a lot of correlative data. And today we are going to review those correlative data.

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I do own a fair number of them, but I use the same ones over and over again.

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And I think that's in keeping with this other recommendation, which this book, A Poison Like No Other, said could make a major dent in the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics that are out there in the environment that we end up ingesting and that the other animals on the planet who are so very important end up ingesting and potentially suffering from. And that's to simply...

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not buy or replace so much of our clothing, but to reuse our clothing. Now, the argument has been made and they counter it in the book. Well, then you're just going to wash the same clothing over and over. You're going to break down those microfibers and introduce those dyes and things into the ocean, et cetera, into the air.

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But it turns out that when you reuse the same clothing and wash it over and over again, you actually see a diminishment in the amount of microfibers and the amount of dyes and things that you extract from those clothing over time. Okay, so now in some odd way, we're talking about clothing purchases or non-purchases in this case on the Huberman Lab podcast.

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But, you know, in researching this episode, I discovered that these are a major source, if not the major source of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in the environment and landfills, ocean, air, et cetera. So while none of us, I believe none of us are going to go out there and create a tire that doesn't degrade as quickly as current tires, right? Most of us don't have the capacity to do that.

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Let's face it, we got to get around in vehicles, all those tires breaking down, not a whole lot we can do about that. We're inhaling all that stuff, but we can make the decision to use the clothing that we've got for longer periods of time. Is it really necessary to keep buying more and more clothes and replacing the old clothes, throwing out the old clothes or even donating those old clothes?

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Who knows? I'm all for donating clothing after you're done with it, but now I have justification for just keeping the t-shirts that I have, making them softer and softer and softer over time.

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And I should mention that of course, when you wear clothing that is shedding these microfiber particles, you're ingesting, or rather you're inhaling more typically, the microfibers and the microplastics and the nanoplastics and all the bad goodies that go with them. You know, as I say that, I think we need to be fair about what that means and what it doesn't mean.

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This newer analysis of the same data claims that the credit cards worth of plastic that it was argued we consume every week, well, that was an overestimate by a million fold. And in fact, it would take 23,000 years to consume enough plastic to lead to that credit card's worth of plastic in our bodies, okay?

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I personally just don't see myself going around and looking at labels, finding only 100% cotton with no microfiber shedding, no dyes, et cetera. I mean, there are a lot of things that are now introduced to even 100% cotton clothing that make them a little bit more water and stain resistant. It's very, very difficult to find such sources of clothing.

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I know they're out there, but they're very difficult to find and they're quite costly in many cases. If you happen to know of some true low cost versions of those things, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. But I think we have to be realistic here. Plastics were introduced in the 1950s. They are everywhere.

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They are in our clothing, they're in tires, they're in medical devices, they're just everywhere. The point of this discussion today is not to try and eliminate plastics. I don't think that's reasonable. I don't even think that would be useful relative to the incredibly powerful use of plastics in just about every industry. There's always a trade-off with these sorts of things.

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And I acknowledge that. What I'm talking about is trying to limit your exposure and trying to buffer yourself against this bioaccumulation in ways that can protect your endocrine system, protect your brain, protect your cardiovascular system, protect your liver, protect the organs and tissue systems of your body so that you can thrive as much as possible.

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So there are some other not to dos or things to avoid. Microwave popcorn turns out to be a major source of these things. Basically any bag or container, can, bag or plastic that has a lining that prevents oily stuff from staining it and getting through, such as microwave popcorn, very likely is a source, or I should say a rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics and endocrine disruptors.

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Does that mean that if you have some microwave popcorn every once in a while, that's going to screw up your estrogen or testosterone system and make you infertile? No, I don't believe that. These things are all a matter of dosage, exposure over time, and so on. Toothpaste and plastic tubing, another rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics that people ingest.

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of course, because you're putting it in your mouth. When I did the oral health episode, I talked about some tooth tablets. I've become quite fond of these.

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I have no financial relationship to the company that makes these, but these are tooth tablets that include something called hydroxyapatite, which is great for the remineralization of teeth, because it turns out your teeth can fill in little cavities that start to form and overall tooth health. It's also great for travel, because first of all, these things come in a glass jar, so no plastic.

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You take the tooth tablets and you just chew them up and then you brush your teeth. It's great because you don't have to worry about how many ounces is going through the screening process at the airport because it's not a liquid, it's not a paste, it's a tablet. They're super convenient. I love those.

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We'll probably link to those in the show note captions, even though I have no relationship to the company. I'm just a big fan of that sort of thing, the convenience and the fact that it's housed in glass. But as I say all this stuff, right? Avoiding drinking out of plastic. Don't turn over your clothing so much.

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wash your clothes, but don't purchase and throw away clothing too much or more than is necessary. Avoiding sea salt, these kinds of things. These are all just choices for you in the buffet of options of ways to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic ingestion and exposure and the bioaccumulation of those things over time.

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and to increase, in the case of things like sulforaphane and sweating, et cetera, and to increase the detoxification and removal of some of the more harmful products attached to or within these microplastics and nanoplastics, right? I certainly don't expect anyone, including myself, to start living a life free of microplastics and nanoplastics.

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So now we have very discrepant data, or rather we have very discrepant analyses of the same data. So you're starting to get a picture of just how confusing this whole field is, but we're going to parse it a little bit further by saying that it's also very clear that microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere, okay? They're just everywhere you look.

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To do that, you'd probably have to leave planet Earth. I know certain people are developing plans to enable us to do that, even if we're not astronauts. And frankly, when you get out to Mars or you get it into outer space, those microplastics and nanoplastics based on everything I've learned and how incredibly sneaky, small, and pervasive they are, well, they're probably in outer space as well.

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Now, the final thing I want to touch on is the potential role of microplastics, nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals on the developing brain. And this is an area that

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I'm very familiar with because much of my career I've focused on brain development, neural development, and one can find a lot of papers out there about the potential neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics, certainly the established neurotoxicity of microplastics and nanoplastics in animal models and the potential neurotoxicity of those things in human tissues.

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Now, of course, because this animal literature and some correlative human literature have been out there for a while, the media and some people in particular have become concerned about and have mentioned the potential role of microplastics and anaplastics and the bad goodies that attach to them or come from them in potentially causing neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD.

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I want to be very clear. I went into this literature. I read this review. It's a quite nice review. The plastic brain neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics

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And sure, there's a lot of animal literature showing, for instance, that there's a disruption in certain enzymatic pathways within neurons, in particular, and this is the one that intrigues me the most, a disruption in what's called acetylcholine esterase.

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Acetylcholine is a neuromodulator involved in neuroplasticity, in attention, among other things, levels of alertness, a number of things, including control of the so-called neuromuscular junctions that allow for us to move our limbs, Acetylcholinesterase is involved in the degradation, the breakdown of acetylcholine in the synapse.

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So neurons release acetylcholine into the synapse where it can have an effect on muscle. or can have an effect on other neurons if we're talking about within the brain. And indeed, there's a fair amount of evidence showing that microplastics and nanoplastics are correlated with reductions in, or just changes in acetylcholinesterase activity.

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Now it is true that where acetylcholine is released in the brain, it can impinge on dopamine circuits that are involved in reward pathways and movement. But I want to be clear,

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people have taken some of those findings, translated them to the correlative data in humans, and have started to link the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics, in their words, not mine, in their words, to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD. And while there is some evidence that some of the behavioral components or cognitive components of autism and ADHD

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may increase in line with increases in microplastic or nanoplastic exposure, the data there are still, in my opinion, very, very weak. So in my opinion, it's far too early to conclude that microplastics and nanoplastics have any role and certainly not a causal role in the development of autism or ADHD or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

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In fact, if I were a PhD advisor for somebody in toxicology or a PhD advisor for somebody and environmental science, and they needed to have a surefire publication, I'd probably suggest that they work on microplastics and go out there and try and find yet another source of microplastics and use a better analysis, for instance, okay?

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That said, the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in placenta and in that first stool from babies, which shows us that those microplastics and nanoplastics are getting into the developing fetus, well, that does, I think raise level of concern.

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And it certainly should motivate pregnant women as well as people who have newborn kids or going to have kids to look around their home environment, think about the things they're putting into their body or the vessels they're using to ingest liquids, to ingest foods, and to start limiting microplastic and nanoplastic exposure, certainly during, but also perhaps before pregnancy and after pregnancy when one is breastfeeding.

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So the point here is that we can't draw a direct relationship between microplastics and nanoplastics and neurodevelopmental disorders. I don't think it would be appropriate at all to do that. However, given that microplastics and nanoplastics have these issues, both from their own breakdown, their presence, right? Their own structural presence can be a problem.

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The chemicals within them can be a problem. The chemicals that attach to them can be a problem potentially. I think learning to limit our exposure throughout our lifespan

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learning to reduce the bioaccumulation through detoxification and excretion pathways, using the various approaches that we talked about, and certainly to pay extra attention to those things around the time of, meaning before, during, and after pregnancy is especially important because we just don't know all the things that these chemicals and these plastics are doing, but none of them seem to be very good, at least not in terms of the ways that they impact our brain and bodily tissues.

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Okay, so today we've talked a lot about microplastics, what they are, where they're found, how they get into our body, where they get lodged within our body, what they potentially do in our body, none of which is good. Some might be innocuous, some might be bad, none of which, at least as far as I know, is good.

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and some ways both through some to dos and some to avoids that we can increase our excretion or our breakdown and removal of the bad stuff on and in microplastics and nanoplastics. And I realized that even though we covered a lot of things, we also just scratched the surface. For instance, we know that receipts are rich sources of BPAs, okay?

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So if you are somebody who handles receipts a lot for your job, probably best to use nitrile gloves, okay? Not latex gloves, but nitrile gloves. Those are going to protect your hands. If you're somebody who purchases things, maybe just say, no thanks, I'll take the electronic receipt or no receipt, okay? However, we need to be reasonable here as well.

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Does this mean that if you touch a receipt that you're going to screw up your testosterone or estrogen? No, but you probably don't want to be rubbing those receipts. And it's very clear that if you use sunscreen or lotions of any kind on your hands, you handle receipts, it can increase the access of those BPAs to your bloodstream.

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And if you're somebody who handles receipts a lot, well, then probably best to use those nitrile gloves. The point here is that there are a lot of different sources of these BPAs, BPSs, PFASs, so-called forever chemicals, microplastics, nanoplastics. I also would just encourage you to do your research. Look at the cans that you drink from. Ensure that they don't include BPAs.

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Doing a graduate thesis isn't just about getting a publication, but what I'm trying to refer to here is that wherever people look for microplastics, they find them. This is true in our environment, and this is true in food, this is true in water, And this is also true for our tissues.

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Look at the different things that you cook with in your kitchen. Try and cook from cast iron or ceramic. And if you don't, look at the other pans and cans and things in your environment and see what your likely exposure to these BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals is. and make choices accordingly. That's what today's episode and frankly, this podcast is about.

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It's about you being informed and making the best choices for your mental health and physical health. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.

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Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

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For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

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to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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So in the last couple of years, there's been an explosion in the number of scientific studies exploring which tissues of the human body, so not just animal models, but the human body contain microplastics and nanoplastics. Okay, so by examining post-mortem tissues, that is tissues from people who are deceased, it's been discovered that there are microplastics and nanoplastics lodged in the brain.

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And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion all about microplastics and nanoplastics. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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So if you take the brain of a deceased adult human, what you find is that they have about 0.5% of the total weight of the brain from microplastics. So this is about a teaspoon of salt or sugars worth of microplastics. Might not seem like much, but if you think about how little neurons are, a typical neuron will have a cell body.

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This is the area that contains the nucleus with all the DNA and so forth. that cell bodies of neurons vary in size tremendously. They can be as small as, you know, five to eight microns across to as much as, gosh, I've seen some neurons down the microscope that are, you know, 50 microns. I've seen some that are 100 microns across. It depends where you look in the nervous system, okay?

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So if you start to think about a half teaspoon of powder of microplastics and nanoplastics, That's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that could be distributed in lots of different places in the brain.

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And a little bit later, we'll talk about what the potential impact is of these microplastics and nanoplastics on the function of particular types of neurons that may impact things like neurodevelopmental trajectories. OK, the argument has been made. I'm not making this argument, but the argument has been made that microplastics and nanoplastics may correlate with things like autism.

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And most importantly, we are going to discuss the various things that we can each and all do to limit our exposure to microplastics, or at least to facilitate the removal of microplastics from our body. because as we'll soon discuss, you have microplastics in essentially every organ and tissue of your body right now. And you are constantly being bombarded with microplastics.

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may correlate with things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I don't actually believe that the data there are strong enough to make those arguments at all.

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However, I will tell you that the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in the brains, that is post-mortem tissue, okay, so deceased people taking the brain, chopping up the brain, looking at it down the microscope and seeing microplastics, and then quantifying the amount of microplastics in different compartments of the brain and distributed across the brain,

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That is concerning to me in the sense that there's enough of it in there and the function of neurons in the nervous system is precise enough that you could imagine

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given that these microplastics and nanoplastics are lodged in particular categories of neurons that do in fact impact things like reward and motivation, things like movement, et cetera, that they could be impacting the function of the nervous system, but there's no direct causal relationship, at least not in humans. There's some interesting data in animal models.

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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

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We'll get back to that a little bit later. So there's microplastics and nanoplastics in brain. You'll find microplastics and nanoplastics in other tissues that have a blood organ barrier. What do I mean by that? Well, the brain is encapsulated in the so-called BBB, the blood brain barrier.

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And that's because your brain tissue, because it doesn't turn over across the lifespan, you don't produce many new neurons. There are a few places you produce new neurons, like the olfactory bulb, the dentate gyrus or the hippocampus, a few places, but these are far and few between.

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Most of your brain tissue that you're born with is the brain tissue that you're going to die with, provided you don't lose that brain tissue through the course of your lifespan, through a head injury or something like that. The neurons you have when you are born actually are far more numerous than the neurons you have at the time when you die.

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This is important and it's one of the reasons we have a blood brain barrier. Nature is very smart. It designed a barrier so that molecules that might be dangerous to the brain can't enter the brain and that's what the BBB is for. Microplastics and nanoplastics are making it from the bloodstream into the brain. Okay, this is what I mean when I say they can cross the blood-brain barrier.

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Then if we take a step back and we ask ourselves, what are some other tissues in the body that have a very robust barrier from the blood? Because a lot of things get into the blood and that's not necessarily good, but it's not necessarily bad if you can excrete those things, right? We have a lot of detoxification mechanisms that include our liver detoxification, et cetera, but

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If these particles are getting from the blood into the brain, what are some other tissues that they're getting into that have these thick barriers or these very stringent barriers? As you can imagine, two other tissues that have very stringent blood to organ barriers are the blood testicular barrier. Why would that be? Okay, why would you protect brain? Well, it can't renew.

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You don't want those neurons to get contaminated with things. So you put a BBB in, a blood brain barrier. You also put a blood testicular barrier in males. Why? Well, that's where the DNA are. That's where the so-called germ cells are. So you don't want things getting into the testicle and mutating the DNA there because then those mutated DNA could be passed on to offspring. Guess what?

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Microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood testicular barrier. And in fact, there was a lot of press this last year about microplastics and nanoplastics being present in every human testicle that was analyzed in, or I should say from post-mortem tissue. Likewise, there's a blood follicle barrier in females. Okay, this is where the eggs come from.

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and microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood follicular barrier. So this is why people are starting to get concerned, right? I suppose we shouldn't be so surprised that we're inhaling microplastics given that they are everywhere. I should mention that there wasn't much plastic around or in use prior to the 1950s. If any of you have ever seen the movie, The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman,

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So the challenge for me and indeed for you as well is to frame this topic of microplastics accurately. It's important that we understand they are out there, they are in us, and indeed, they can cause serious issues for our health. However, we also need to take agency. We need to understand how we can limit what's called the bioaccumulation of microplastics in our organs and tissues.

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This is the only time you'll see somebody driving eastward across the Bay Bridge, all right, from San Francisco toward Berkeley on the top deck. It actually runs in the other direction. They shut down the Bay Bridge. That's in The Graduate. And the other thing that's in The Graduate is this famous scene.

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If you're old enough like me to remember the movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's lying in the pool. It's after his graduation. He's lying in the pool. He doesn't really know what he's going to do with his life. And this guy comes up to him and he says, you know, the future is plastics. And it became this kind of famous line or pseudo famous line.

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Now that movie takes place at a time when plastics were really booming as an industry and indeed polyethylene, polyurethane, these plastic materials were developed because they were very durable. They were long lasting. In fact, they are not biodegradable. They're not broken down very easily, if at all, and certainly not within biological tissues.

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These plastics went from essentially nonexistent in the 1940s and prior to in pretty much everything involved in manufacturing. OK, even in different aspects of surgical implants and things of that sort. So plastics are indeed everywhere. And that started in the 1950s, hence that line from the graduate. So it's not surprising that microplastics and nanoplastics would get into our body. Right.

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If they're everywhere in our environment and we're inhaling them all day. then of course they'll get into our lungs and then they're small enough they can get into our bloodstream. But as I mentioned, the body has these cleansing systems or these detoxification systems to remove things, but they're not removing the microplastics or at least not all of them from brain, testicle and follicle.

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And I should point out that Microplastics and nanoplastics are also found in all the other tissues of the body. In fact, I don't think there's a single investigation of human tissue or animal tissue for microplastics or nanoplastics where they didn't get a positive result, meaning where they didn't find them in the tissue. You can find them in not just the upper lungs, but in the lower lungs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Teo Soleimani. Dr. Teo Soleimani is a double board certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon.

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Roca. Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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What about vaping nicotine or oral use of nicotine? So nicotine gum, mints, pouches. And let's touch on vaping first because that's becoming more common.

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I did an episode of this podcast on alcohol, which somewhat to my surprise was very widely shared, only to my surprise because I've never been a big consumer of alcohol, but apparently many out there are. And the data came back, at least to my understanding, that zero alcohol is healthier than any and that up to two drinks per week

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is probably okay as long as you're an adult of drinking age and not an alcoholic. You don't have issues with alcohol use disorder as it's now called, probably okay. But beyond that, you start running into some health issues that can be offset by better behaviors of other types. But what about the direct effects of alcohol on skin in the short term?

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Does it increase blood flow and therefore improve skin? Are there long-term indirect effects? I could imagine that alcohol disrupts the gut microbiome, which then disrupts skin, et cetera. So maybe we could break this down into direct acute effects, meaning immediate effects that are really direct from consuming alcohol that day, that week, let's say.

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I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly from moment to moment. Roka understands all of that and has designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind.

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versus chronic effects through other systems like disruption of sleep and microbiome?

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Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were first designed for use in sport, in particular for things like running and cycling. And as a consequence, Roka frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that you're wearing them. And they're also designed so that they don't slip off, even if you get sweaty.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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But I'm not hearing any positive effects of alcohol on skin health or appearance.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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And what I'm pulling from all of the discussion we've had up until now is that Improved blood flow and strong hydration status are both important. Do you recommend patients drink a certain amount of fluid each day or maintain adequate hydration as a means to build or maintain skin health and appearance?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Now, even though Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used not just for sport, but also for wearing out to dinner, to work, essentially any time and any setting. I wear Roka readers at night or Roka eyeglasses if I'm driving at night.

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What are some of the parameters for selecting a moisturizer? People are immediately going to say, well, what constitutes a good moisturizer? What should it have in it? What are some things to avoid?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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You were telling me before this recording started, there are people who, and forgive me for those that cringe when I say this, that put placental extract

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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And I wear Roka sunglasses in the middle of the day, anytime it's too bright for me to see clearly. My eyes are somewhat sensitive, so I need that. I particularly like the Hunter 2.0 frames, which I have as eyeglasses and now as sunglasses too. If you'd like to try Roka, you can go to roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your purchase. Again, that's roka.com slash Huberman to get 20% off.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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I see. So when I think about something in a jar, you have something like Aquaphor or something, which is pretty thick stuff. So that would be fine for someone with eczema, not okay for somebody with acne.

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

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What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. noon, or evening. When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome.

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These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Why do people wake up with bags under their eyes if they just slept for six or eight hours? Yeah.

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Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing I've consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

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Skin cleansing is a topic that gets a lot of coverage. And I sometimes get chuckles or even attacks for saying I've always just used unscented Dove soap, the bar, not the liquid soap, or like acetophil soap. And this is because when I was younger, like much younger, I had very sensitive skin. And when I was like... kid, seven, eight, nine years old.

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I think I just started using unscented Dove soap at some point and things like it, gentle soaps without fragrances. What are your thoughts on those? And I ask not for my own purposes, I'm going to stick with it because it works for me, unless you tell me I shouldn't. I see this enormous market for skin cleansers that includes a range of costs from relatively low to near astronomical.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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If you tell me that this unscented Dove soap or Cetaphil soap is the way to go, and by the way, I'm not sponsored by either of those. I don't even know who they're manufactured by, so there's no commercial angle here. But I'll be relieved because they tend to fall on the lower end of the cost bracket relative to some of these astronomically priced cleansers.

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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, even improvements in acne, reducing pain and inflammation, improving mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself.

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The unscented, non-fragranced versions of them.

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What sets Juve lights apart, and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices, is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning it uses specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

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He did his training at Stanford University, and he was a clinical professor of dermatology and dermatologic surgery at UCLA, that is, the University of California, Los Angeles. Today, we discuss all things related to skin appearance, skin health, and skin longevity. For instance, we discuss sun exposure and the impact it can have on both the appearance and health of one's skin.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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So does that mean that people should bathe probably once or twice a day, but the people that are Bathing three times a day, it's probably excessive. I mean, are we saying that you can't get into water? I mean, when you say cleansing, you're talking about face cleansing. I realize this is going to be highly individual, but some people are just out of habit, shower and use cleanser

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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you know, twice a day or once a day. I think for me, it's in the morning or in the evening, sometimes both. If I do a workout, I try and shower as close as possible after the workout, as soon as possible after the workout rather, because otherwise I will break out, you know? So it sounds like one has to kind of learn what their cadence is and that's going to vary by age.

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It's only about the size of a sandwich, so it's super portable and convenient to use. I also have a Juve whole body panel, and I use that about three or four times per week. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.

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including things like acne, psoriasis. Most people think about shampooing for sake of hair, but there's the scalp component. And since you're an expert in skin, we should probably spend a bit of time on this. For people that tend to have a dry or flaky scalp, what should they do about that? My understanding is that some of the more typical commercial

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Anti-dandruff shampoos can contain things that might cause issues for hair itself. So they might help with the flaking and drying of the scalp, but damage other aspects of you know, either appearance or health of hair. What are some really good options for people that have dry scalp? What are some great options for people that have oily scalp?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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And let's leave aside the frequency of use and just perhaps just put it on the shelf as much as you need it, but not more. So that could be once a week. It could be daily. It could be twice a day in extreme cases, it sounds like.

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Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman to get $400 off select Juve products. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.

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I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Got it. So it sounds like the best options for cleansing skin, for shampooing, really stem from knowing whether or not your skin tends to air oily or dry, figuring out how often to cleanse.

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And then as you pointed out before, even though there's an enormous range of costs for these things, none of the solutions that you're describing sound like they fall on the high end of cost or even in the middle end of cost, which is a bit surprising to me. If I had a magic wand, I would make for all organic, non-processed and minimally processed foods to be very inexpensive.

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But it turns out those things tend to be more expensive. You can go to farmer's markets and cut back on the cost, et cetera. But there seems to be an unfortunate tradeoff between – availability and cost and benefit, or at least risk.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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But it doesn't sound like that's the case with skincare or scalp care that one can exercise really excellent skin and scalp care without having to go into a range of spending an outrageous amount of money.

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We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?

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It's going to be very reassuring to many people. It's also going to be somewhat destabilizing to people who are really attached to the idea that the more expensive products are really doing something that much more beneficial for them.

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So this seems like an appropriate time to ask about sun exposure. And then we'll also talk about sunscreen, sunblocks, skin cancer. Sure. But what is the relationship between sun exposure and skin health specifically? Meaning how much sun exposure is healthy for our skin? I'm a big believer in getting sun exposure to the eyes early in the day, blinking as needed to protect the eyes, of course.

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Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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But in order to set one's circadian rhythm for elevated daytime mood, focus and alertness, and improved nighttime sleep, there's just so much data to support setting one's circadian rhythm properly for sake of health. And there's so much data to support the fact that sunlight viewing in particular is the best way to do that.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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And sunlight viewing in the early part of the day in particular is the best way to do that. Beyond that, how much sun exposure to the skin is good for us? Is it zero? Is it five minutes? Does it depend?

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If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows.

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So even midday sun, maybe if there's some cloud cover or we have some sunscreen on or a physical barrier like sun and long, excuse me, like hat and long sleeves, then getting some sun exposure in your mind is good for our overall well-being, mood, et cetera.

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I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

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Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

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And now for my discussion with Dr. Teo Soleimani. Dr. Teo Soleimani, welcome.

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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what about sunscreens and sunblocks and i think we should distinguish between those two labels you know in the old days as i understand sunscreen was the word used to describe stuff that you put on your skin that absorbs uv and then sunblock is the stuff that you put on your skin to reflect uv um

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Typically nowadays people say sunscreen more than they say sunblock or they use them interchangeably without any knowledge of the underlying mechanism. So first of all, let's clarify sunscreen versus sunblock.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Oh, well, it's an honor to have you. Let's talk about this amazing organ we call skin. So skin, of course, covers our other organs. It's its own living biological entity. And just for sake of educational purposes and to frame the rest of what we're going to talk about, how much turnover is there in our skin? Meaning the skin that I'm wearing right now

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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mineral-based sunscreens are sometimes called inorganic, correct?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Is the mechanism for these two the same? Because I was under the impression that the mineral-based inorganic sunscreens reflected back UV rays, whereas the chemical-based sunscreens absorbed UV rays, but there's a bit of an online debate about this, claiming that they all absorb UV rays.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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So what is your recommendation about protecting oneself from the sun? And maybe for the moment, let's just set aside sunscreens and acknowledge that a physical barrier like hat, long sleeves, long pants provides a pretty good barrier to the sun, correct?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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Is that going to be 100%, 50% of the skin that I'm going to be wearing a year from now? I'm 49 years old.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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If I understand correctly, you're saying that the use of sunscreen can protect against premature aging. Let's say sunblock, because I think we're going to arrive at mineral-based sunscreens probably being the better option, but we can make sure that we double-click on that, so to speak. that sun exposure itself perhaps is not linked to the most deadly of skin cancers. That tells me two things.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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It doesn't tell me that I can just spend as much time as I want in the sun, but it does tell me that I should probably look into the things that cause the most deadly skin cancers. Okay. But I'm also hearing that regular application of sunblock

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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and or physical barrier will protect my skin against some forms of premature aging caused by sun exposure, but will not necessarily protect me against the most common forms of skin cancer. That is peculiar in the sense that, or even baffling to the non-dermatologist, me, because we already know that sun exposure causes UV mutations, mutations in the DNA of cells,

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is one of the kind of core components of cancer. So how do we square all of this?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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I think most people would prefer not to have the premature aging caused by sun exposure. So what should those people do? I've taken on a practice of... Putting a mineral-based inorganic sunscreen on my face, my arms if they're going to be exposed, back of my neck, tops of my ears. If I'm going to be out in midday or late-day sun that feels intense, I'll do that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4352.901

Every single time I go out now on overcast days, not so much for viewing morning sunlight. I don't do that. In fact, when the sun is low in the sky, I don't tend to wear sunblock. That's me. That's been my choice. There were a few years there where I didn't put on sunscreen, or if I did, it was like on a camping trip or skiing or something where the sun felt very intense.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4376.249

And in that case, I would just reach for whatever sunscreen or sunblock was available because I wasn't aware. that some of the ingredients in certain chemical-based sunscreens may be problematic. So I think I fall into the typical category of a lot of people.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4392.167

But of course, there's the category of people that are like, nope, sunscreen sunblock is terrible all the time, or they're just too lazy or uninterested in applying it. But then there's this whole category of people that are putting it on Every single time they go outside in hopes that that's going to keep their skin appearing much younger and just generally are kind of afraid of the sun.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4437.99

No skin cancers.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4443.992

If you tell me that he got skin cancer on the opposite side, I'm really going to gasp.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

45.674

In reference to that, we discuss sunscreens, which ones are safe, which ones perhaps elicit a bit more concern, or perhaps should be avoided, and we discuss the surprising relationship between sun exposure and skin cancer. We discuss laser treatments for the skin, both for the appearance of skin, in order to make it appear more youthful, as well as to prevent certain forms of skin cancer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

451.721

I mean, I guess I'm biased, but... Well, I find a 28-day turnover, just to be incredible... The skin as I understand it is innervated, that is it receives connections from the nervous system. So I think for many people, Their interest in skin is skin appearance, although we will also talk about skin health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

472.914

But in terms of skin appearance, how much does stress, short-term and longer-term stress, impact the appearance of our skin? And how does that work? I could imagine that the neurons release certain things into the skin. Does stress make our skin age faster? Does that mean it turns over more quickly or turns over more slowly? Maybe you could link these two aspects of our biology for us.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4803.877

So the takeaway for me is, Physical barrier, no issues. Mineral-based sunscreen, safest. So that's zinc oxide, titanium dioxide.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4826.773

Okay. And then chemical-based sunscreens, probably best avoided. Okay. And then you mentioned polypodium. So this is a pill. It's a supplement basically that one can take. I only call it a supplement because it's not a prescription drug, correct? Yeah. That protects your skin from UV damage from the inside.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

4970.08

What are the dosages of polypodium that are useful and are there any side effects?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5078.636

Interesting. And you mentioned sun powder as a potential, that's a brand name?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5163.737

I think we both agree that the mineral-based sunscreens are going to be the best option of the ones out there, if one is at all concerned about some of these chemical components and chemical sunscreens. Yeah, fair enough. Absolutely agree. Yeah, so within that category, are there particular things to look for?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5181.889

I'm not necessarily trying to aim for particular brands here, but given that I have no relationship to any skincare products, I would just like to know which ones...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5192.175

to look for or will any zinc oxide and or titanium dioxide containing sunscreen provided there are no chemical components in there besides the inactive ingredients of course um will any suffice because in that case people can just shop for cost or availability

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5311.659

What are some, if any, of the concerns that some of the components in chemical-based sunscreens can cross the blood-brain barrier?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5397.504

Another call for the mineral-based sunscreens just as a, why take the risk?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5413.305

This seems like a good time to shift a little bit of our attention to nutrition and the gut microbiome. Now, this isn't an infinitely large topic. We could spend several episodes discussing this, but if you were to provide us some of the major takeaways as it relates to nutrition and skin health, nutrition and skin appearance, gut and skin health and appearance, what would those be?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5564.506

So my understanding, and we'll get into this more as it relates to acne, is that patterns of eating, either content, food volume, that is caloric load, et cetera, that increase insulin and things like mTOR are sort of pro-acne. They're going to aggravate or increase acne. Whereas the things that tend to lower circulating blood glucose, insulin, and reduce inflammation tend to be kind of

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5592.99

anti-acne, or sorry, we pull in the other direction towards reducing acne load. But if we were to just step back and say, okay, the typical person who wants to have the healthiest, best appearing skin, who's not dealing with any specific issue, because we will get into those specific issues, can we say they should eat a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet? Is it okay to be an omnivore?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5617.14

Some people are on the extreme of this carnivore type diet. Some of those people actually report elimination of certain skin conditions. I don't know. I've never tried one of those extreme diets, but you hear this, but again, you hear a lot of things. So it seems to me that the relationship between keeping the gut microbiome healthy and ingesting sufficient amounts of fiber is pretty clear.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5643.618

The relationship between keeping the gut microbiome healthy and overall, that is systemic inflammation low is pretty clear. And that eating foods that are mostly unprocessed or minimally processed keeps inflammation on the lower side as opposed to eating more processed foods. But assuming you, would you agree or disagree with that? Feel free to disagree, please.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

5667.615

So assuming that that's all true, is there any evidence that the ingestion of specific foods can make skin healthier? Like you'll see this stuff, like, oh, if you have two cups of blueberries a day, your skin is going to be healthier. Or is all of that indirect by virtue of specific micronutrients that are in those foods? Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6087.466

I guess the most direct question is, do you yourself consume collagen proteins in a supplement form or make it a point to eat things like bone broth, which contain high percentages of collagen?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6143.695

Is there a role for omega-3 fatty acids like fish oils and things of that sort for skin health specifically?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6178.317

What about some treatments that are known to be beneficial for the appearance and health of skin that people are not as aware of? Because I think people who are concerned with their skin health and appearance, they think about sunscreen, and we've learned a lot about that from you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6193.57

But what are some things that really work to improve skin health and appearance that perhaps require a visit to the dermatologist, but that you don't hear enough about? Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6492.373

Why do you think, given the immense interest in skin appearance and health, we don't hear more about this?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6528.869

This would be things like Retin-A.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

66.836

We discuss retinoids. We discuss supplements and nutrition, all in reference, again, to skin health and appearance. Thanks to Dr. Soleimani's incredible depth of expertise, as well as clarity of communication about the do's and do nots that relate to skin care and appearance and to avoiding and treating skin cancers.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6680.031

So this would be go to your dermatologist, ask for some, is it laser resurfacing?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6721.236

So people have this done once a year or so?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

675.236

I guess people rarely are sympathetic to presidents for aging quickly because I guess if there were a president who did not age quickly, we would worry they did not work hard enough or something of that sort. But the relationship between stress and skin fascinates me because – not just of the direct relationship.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6796.241

It's amazing. How is this different than exfoliating skin? Like if one were to just try and scrape away some of the dead skin through some semi-vigorous buffing of the skin with like a sponge. I've never done either of these procedures. Like I said, my skincare routine is very basic. It's the unscented dove soap, the shower once or twice a day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6820.981

I mean, I feel pretty good. I mean, I think... You know, sleep seems to play a significant role for me. I do get probably a bit more sun exposure than most people. I'm conscious of checking for skin cancers and we'll talk about that because those do run in my family. But, and I try and eat right and exercise right. consumed much alcohol in my lifetime.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

695.667

Like when we see people and they're stressed, like it seems like their whole, the power of their skin changes, the kind of level of gleam in their eyes change. And of course the eyes are a direct piece of the nervous system, really. They're as close to the brain as one can get. outside the skull.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6967.447

Is that the IPL laser?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

6988.656

I've had that actually because I had an angioma. Yeah. I've had it three times. And the third time they hit this thing, it went away, but not without a very significant bruise lasting almost a month. I mean, it was pretty dramatic. Overdone it. Right. But it did eliminate the vessel.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7012.99

So as long as we're on the topic of photobiomodulation, what about red light near infrared light? Is there any evidence that it can benefit skin health and appearance? Nowadays, you can find masks that will emit red light. Some people will purchase red lights they stand in front of.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

712.408

But it also suggests, because of the dynamic turnover of skin every 28 days, that if people were to become less stressed, that their skin health and appearance might improve. Is that also the case?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7152.526

So probably looking for something that's at least endorsed by dermatologists makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I should say here, I have no No angle into this. These masks that emit red light, I don't have any business relationship to them. So that's not why I bring it up. I was just very curious. I see them in my Instagram feed, probably by virtue of...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7171.533

doing public facing health and science information and my interest in light. What about, oh, yes, excuse me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7214.824

Thank you for that. And full disclosure, I was accurate in saying that I don't have any relationship to any red light masks. companies or products, but this podcast is sponsored by Juve, which makes medical grade panels for red light and near infrared light. And I do own one of those and I use, I have a small portable one I use, and then I have a panel I stand in front of.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7233.369

So that includes my face and then I'll turn around and so do a whole body a couple times a week.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7247.901

It's interesting when people see and hear about red light and near-infrared light therapies, I think a lot of people think, oh, this is kind of like next-age biohacking. But there was a Nobel Prize given for photobiomodulation for the treatment of lupus in the early 1900s.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7264.474

So this is a longstanding thing, the use of light of particular wavelengths or combinations of wavelengths, of which red light and blue light are, of course. in order to target different layers within the skin to get some desired effect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7430.652

Well, I think it's a very relevant tangent because the relationship between immune system function and skin is very clear. And these conditions that you're referring to, vitiligo, acne, psoriasis, eczema, et cetera, have interesting relationships to the immune system. So that's actually a perfect segue for what I'd like to talk about next. So let's start with psoriasis.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7452.929

What is the story with psoriasis? What is it? What can make it worse? What can make it better?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7591.718

So these drugs that target these specific interleukins seem like the most direct way to treat psoriasis. Some people, for whatever reason, have an aversion to prescription drugs. I'm not necessarily one of those people, but I, like everybody else, would like to know what we can do to reduce symptoms of things like psoriasis without having to, quote unquote, take anything.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7731.258

That was my question since the sun emits UV. why not just get some additional sunlight exposure for psoriasis?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

7803.081

What about vitiligo? This is something I did not cover in the solo episode about skin health, but I got a lot of questions about vitiligo, of course, being this typically patchy, non-pigmented regions of skin that you said is at least some... cases are related to the immune system. These people get skin cancers less often, is that right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8027.09

It's fascinating. Again, speaking to the fact that skin is far more than just this protective outer sheath. It's a reflection of so much that's going on internally. And we know that intuitively also by observing others.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

803.797

It is fascinating. It also speaks to the value of having some immediate and long-term stress reduction techniques just as a sort of first principle of taking care of one's skin. There are some other things that cause vasoconstriction, basically the tightening of the vessels and capillaries to the skin, as I understand. Maybe we could just tick through a few of these and get your sense.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8042.441

I think this is one of several ways that parents can communicate well with their children or their children with their parents rather in terms of how they're feeling prior to language. You know, they'll look at their skin, their stool, obviously fussiness and mood and those things too.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8059.464

But we seem to have developed an intuitive understanding that a shift in the kind of like tone of the skin or some other features of the skin signal to us wellness or lack of wellness.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8139.268

It is so cool. What about acne? Acne seems very common, you know, as a We progress through puberty. There seems to be more acne. Sometimes it's transient. Sometimes it's not. What are some things that people can do to prevent or reduce acne?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8264.463

Is it true that eating a diet that is – of slight excess in calories because it will tend to push the insulin glucose regulation system more into the positive as opposed to, let's just say, higher levels of insulin in circulating blood glucose than one would observe at, say, maintenance calories or sub-maintenance calories that overeating a little bit could cause acne.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

828.41

I consume caffeine every morning, usually yerba mate tea, some coffee a little bit later. Those will increase vasoconstriction to some extent, although chronic caffeine intake may cause vasodilation. So I'd like to know the relationship between caffeine and blood flow to the skin and skin health and appearance. That's the first question.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8292.361

any foods that promote increases in glucose and insulin? So sugary foods, high glycemic foods, these sorts of things. Can that actually increase acne? Fried foods?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8378.763

What about rosacea? I hear so much about this, and I'm going to assume that we can mark off at least one thing as clear, which is that alcohol can exacerbate rosacea, maybe directly. but certainly indirectly by impeding some aspects of the microbiome, disrupting sleep, rosacea gets worse.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8401.042

But what are things that people can do, do's and don'ts, that is for rosacea, if it's mild rosacea, like excessively ruddy cheeks or superficial riding capillaries that seem to bother a lot of people? I know that it bothers a lot of people because they asked about this quite a lot. in the questions when I solicited for questions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

849.027

And then dovetailed with that question is nicotine, which is also thought to be a vasoconstrictor. It raises blood pressure because it's a vasoconstrictor. What are the effects of caffeine, both acutely and chronically, and nicotine? Let's assume that nicotine is consumed either by smoking or oral ingestion on skin appearance and health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

85.943

By the end of today's episode, you will be armed with an immense amount of knowledge that is the very latest in our understanding of how to improve and protect your skin. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8737.602

A couple of things that you taught me that I just want to pass along in short form, and please correct me if I have this wrong. One, if you can avoid popping pimples, definitely avoid it because it can cause damage, recruitment of these matrix metalloproteases, which essentially digest some of the deeper layers of the skin, leave scars.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8768.859

I think it's to eradicate the infection type of thing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8857.384

And if they pop on their own, I can't believe we're having this conversation, but that's a skin health and appearance episode. After all, if they pop on their own, then... cleaning it with a gentle cleanser is probably the best way to go. No topical antibiotics. Is that right? No.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

8906.794

And what about the use of corticosterone cream? Like if somebody has a red bump and they're headed to an event or something and they want to – eliminate some of the redness and bumpiness.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9015.36

Assuming sterile technique and other safety measures in place, are tattoos inherently bad for skin?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9088.427

That's a good segue into surveying for skin cancers. Earlier, you talked about some of the more common forms of skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, but then there's the one, no one truly wants, which is melanoma.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9107.28

So I was taught to keep an eye on my moles.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9111.503

If they change, change in border, change in size, et cetera, to notify a dermatologist. Yeah. I get my moles checked about, I don't know, I just had it done less than a year ago. But what about getting all skin checked? I mean, what do you, this is your area of expertise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you had a magic wand.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9133.08

to help prevent skin cancers, what would you have people do?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9389.004

For the HPV that eventually becomes squamous cell carcinoma. Yeah. Is the HPV vaccine effective even at older ages?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9475.89

As I recall, planter's warts, which are these warts that burrow a kind of root into the bottom of the foot, they're very painful. That actually... can be caused by HPV. It's a form of HPV. And it's not sexually transmitted. It's locker room transmitted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9544.8

So warts on their fingers, plantars warts on their feet.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9593.577

Do you think soon we will be in the landscape of vaccines for all forms of skin cancer?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9605.814

Loaded term.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9674.838

Fascinating. And a good place for us to probably pause until the next time we have you back to talk about where that technology evolves. Because today you've taught us so much about skin, what it is, its anatomy, its physiology, what it reflects in terms of our internal workings, health, or in some cases, challenges with health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9699.329

Talked about various conditions such as psoriasis, acne, eczema, dandruff, as it's sometimes called, and what we can do. The role of nutrition, avoiding certain things like excess alcohol, nicotine, et cetera, but also some of the newer and more exciting treatments that exist for all these conditions. merely cosmetic and uncomfortable, some truly life-threatening and dangerous like melanoma.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9728.525

So for all those reasons, and also for taking time out of your very busy clinical schedule to come talk to us, I really appreciate it and I want to voice my

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9739.299

uh appreciation both for myself and for those listening and viewing I know people will have many many questions so we will refer them to your uh social media accounts and links to your clinic and so forth so that they can have those questions addressed and who knows maybe

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9754.819

and get the chance to work with you in the meantime i just want to say thank you for this public education gift that you've given us um i'm thinking about skin very differently now and i plan to do and not do certain things uh in light of today's conversation no pun intended so

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9804.107

Well, we will certainly bring you back to further the discussion. Meanwhile, thank you ever so much, Dr. Soleimani. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about how to improve and protect your skin with Dr. Teo Soleimani. To learn more about his work and find links to his clinic, please see the show note captions.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and on Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9856.627

It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9874.515

And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9892.259

If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I cover science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

991.019

Interesting. And what about nicotine?

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9912.131

Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9915.393

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs, which summarize various things that you can do in order to, for instance, optimize neuroplasticity and learning, or optimize your sleep, or improve dopamine regulation.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

9934.641

Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and provide us your email to obtain the newsletter. And I'd like to point out that we do not share your email with anybody. Once again, thank you for joining me for today's discussion about skin health and appearance with Dr. Teo Soleimani.

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Dr. Teo Soleymani: How to Improve & Protect Your Skin Health & Appearance

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And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Stuart McMillan. Stu McMillan is one of the world's most sought after coaches for teaching people how to get stronger, run faster, be more powerful and healthier.

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And they're not assisted. This is one thing where I hear we're cutting between sport and we're talking about fitness. You know, the reason I mentioned the age when I started TRT is that, A, you know, Never occurred to me, didn't need it. I felt like I got great results until then. And I think the biggest thing is recovery. I do think it helps you recover better. No question, actually.

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But a real shame nowadays is that because of Instagram and people showing their bodies and this desire for people to get results more quickly, a lot of guys in their teens, 20s, and 30s taking testosterone when they don't need it, it does shut down sperm production, unless they're offsetting that with HCG or something like that.

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And they may think they don't want kids now, but they may want them later, and some permanent damage can be done. In addition to that, I mean, puberty is a very protracted thing for a lot of people. It's not like, oh, you start puberty at 14, it ends at 16, your brain's still developing. So we don't really understand how all that works. Not this Olympics, but prior to that,

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There was a female athlete who tested positive for DECA, the DECA burrito. She blamed it on a burrito meat. And I remember hearing that and I sort of facetiously said – and I'll say it again, not facetiously. Like if she got caught for DECA, I hope she took DECA because to knowingly take a banned substance and get caught –

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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then banned from the sport is one thing but to inadvertently take a banned substance as did this bobsledder and then get banned from your sport that's a real tragedy for multiple reasons and that's what happened dreadful it is it's absolutely dreadful she just she just started competing again like last month rob and i were actually talking about this yesterday at the track

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Yeah.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I get contacted a lot, probably not as much as other people do, by... athletes at different levels, professional, amateur, et cetera, asking about ways to improve testosterone, et cetera. I got great results all through my mid thirties until mid forties. And still with like Tonga Ali, freeing some testosterone up. My blood charts told me that worked for me, may not work for everybody. Great.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Fidojia, things like that. Things like that, subtle effects, but meaningful, subtle, but meaningful. Yeah. And then athletes will ask me, well, is it allowed? I said, you have to check with your organization. You just can't take something. You have to check with your organization. The thing I am well aware of now is all the peptide use, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Peptides are really, really big and they're in use in the general population more and more. And it'll be interesting to see how those impact sport. I'm not aware of any athletes, at least none have come to me saying they take these peptides, but it's going to be interesting to see how that shapes sport. I think people... overestimate how much these drugs contribute to success at the elite level.

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I ran cross country as a senior in high school. I've been running consistently since I was 16, three times a week. I don't consider myself even a runner. I just run for the pleasure of it. A long run, a medium run, and a short run. Perhaps it was the movies about Steve Prefontaine, of which there were two.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Because, I mean, what you're talking about with these athletes you work with are just the, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of work to get a

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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one percent improvement in some metric or 0.1 0.1 it's just you know i think people really overestimate it sure if people just want to be big with a bunch of acne yeah you can do that big acne sterile like they're you know they can you can get that in the locker room most any gym nowadays um please don't do it um but to get you know half a second off your time

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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That's awesome. And it points to the fact that more muscle isn't always the solution. The things that keep coming to mind are the ability to put away self-consciousness, to use the body to express, to find oneself. And it's so interesting because I thought we were going to sit down and talk about running.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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But I think these are much larger and, if I may, more important themes, although people should definitely skip and stride.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I think one's called Prefontaine and the other one's called Without Limits that are quite good. They got me excited about track. And then I started going up to University of Oregon and attending track meets as a fan. But there's this dramatized moment about Pre, as they called him, and Bowerman, the coach up in Eugene, where –

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I can't think of anything else. And you're talking to somebody who's now working on grip strength because I was challenged publicly by Paul Saladino, the carnivore MD who now talks about animal diet. And people are starting to take him more seriously, by the way, because at first it was all meat. Then it is meat and fruit. There's meat, fruit, and some dairy. I do this and I also eat vegetables.

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Guy has salad in his name, for God's sake. He's a friend. I'm friends with him. I'm friends with Lane. I'm friends with Atiyah. I get along with all those guys, but some of them don't get along with each other. I'll tell you that. But he challenged me to a grip strength contest, which actually was not grip strength. And he said, this is the marker of longevity. And he- Hello, bastard.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Hung from a bar, switching hands for 12 plus minutes in the rain. Now, he had someone toweling off the bar, but that is a very impressive grip strength slash endurance. score. As long as we're on this, I mean, this has become like kind of an online thing. People want to challenge each other with, here are my biometrics. You asked, what are the markers of longevity?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Brian Johnson is big on these are my markers. Those have become controversial lately because it's unclear the markers were all collected at the same date. You know, there's questions about For instance, it's weird that testosterone will be elevated, but not showing LH means you're probably enhanced. And if he is, cool, but people need to be very open.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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The nice thing about what Paul showed is he showed the full length video. You have to show the full length video. Folks, Brian, I'm calling you out. Specifically, you can't post VO2 max and not show the actual ride and the read off the, you have to show video. People don't trust it anymore. And so the point here is, is grip strength? Is it VO2 max?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Is it your testosterone relative to free testosterone? It's all these things. Like you said, if I were to step back and say, is there a single physical metric? I think you got me. I think that the ability to run fast without blowing a gasket. Yeah. or injuring yourself in some way, run fast for you, would be it. And I did not think about that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I certainly wouldn't have said that at the beginning of this conversation. So I think it's a very important insight. And that, if nothing else, should motivate everybody to get better at it. And they can check out the video that we did. What you said earlier has become to me and will remain my goal.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I think that wellbeing, physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing is the ability to exert, express pressure mentally and physically, like sit down, like, you know, to actually generate pressure around doing something hard. That's, you know, takes an organization of mind and body.

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It could be a physical pursuit and then to feel peace from the better expression of that cognitive or physical or creative endeavor. I think this, um, This pressure piece thing is more than non-trivial. I think it's the essence of what I've been seeking my whole life, the ability to exert pressure and to create things that are meaningful, and then the ability to feel peace. I love that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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allegedly, purportedly, Pree wants to run the mile because everyone in the country at that time was obsessed with who's the fastest miler. But Bowerman says to him, no, you're a 5,000 runner. You're gonna run the three mile. And he said, no one cares about the 5,000. He said, you're gonna make them care. And it turned out to be the right fit. The 5,000 was the right event for him.

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Well, it's yours.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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that makes a lot of sense i love that because you got to sleep at night you got to train hard 100 you got to do your if you're me you know formal education and then you got to also relax and have a good time and can you do them all at the same time that's the that's the key yeah can you structure your days in a way where the first two-thirds is just pure pressure and be okay with that because you know there's peace coming yeah because of some of the things that you pressured upon yourself well i love it and it's all it's all yours do and um i have to say i

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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It's been years. I've been wanting to sit down and talk with you for a very long time. We run into each other at track meets.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And it's a real honor and pleasure. You've taught us so much and there's much more. So I hope you'll come back at some point and we'll... Talk about other things as things evolve. Talk about sprinting. Talk about sprinting. And I'll do a dangerous thing, which is to say if folks want to go to a track meet, I'll be at the track meets.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I'll probably be letting people know when I'll be at track meets. I go as a fan. I'm not looking for attention there. I'm actually there to just enjoy the incredible expression of the athletes, both physical and emotional expression. It's a real... It's a real beautiful thing.

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Well, you're a legend, as everyone says, in the sport and outside of it too. Thanks so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure and an honor. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate you. Thank you. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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So that was a moment where a coach could identify, you could be a great miler, but you'll be a spectacular 5,000 runner. Is that based on sort of times and splits and recovery and all that? Or is there actually a body type and a gait that is best? Because one of my favorite things to find on social media

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And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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because if you like or if you don't like things like running, swimming, cycling, or other activities such as weight training or yoga, there's going to be a lot to take away from it that you can apply. Stu McMillan is a true savant of coaching how best to move and how to improve your health. It was an honor and privilege to host him and to learn from him. I'm sure you'll agree.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Stu McMillan. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I promise this is not a digression, is where they'll set out a race, an animated race between like a rabbit, a cheetah, an elephant, a human. It's very interesting to see which animals are fastest over which distances. They fall out over different distances. And most people perhaps are surprised to find that the animal that wins the long, long, long, longest distance

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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and beats all the other species is us. So we're not good in the sprint compared to the cheetah, but we are oh so good at the marathon and ultra marathon compared to the cheetah or any other animal. So do you think it's something special about the gait, the personality? Times in various events.

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What funnels somebody's understanding of themselves or an athlete to say, you know, you're meant to do this?

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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Stu McMillan. Stu McMillan, welcome.

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I feel like this is a great metaphor for life in general, for career. I mean, I've enjoyed different careers and I'm glad I started in the one I did, but that I've ended up in the one I'm in now, even though I still teach and I'm involved in research in some ways.

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um there's such a immense pleasure to uh finding the the thing yeah for oneself yeah but you can't get there first this is what i think is frustrating to young people now because of the internet they think like what's my calling what's what's my event what's my sport what am i built for and then you have all these examples right you've got your um shaquille o'neal's clearly built for basketball and then you have your

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Growing up when I grew up, you're Spud Webb, right? Much, much shorter than most of the professional players in the NBA, but wins the slam dunk competition. And so he's always used it as an example that you can bridge these gaps. But I do think that dedicated application to one area is the best lane from which to exit to another freeway. You can't just get onto the Autobahn, so to speak, for you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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You have to sometimes get on Highway 101 for a while and speed a little bit or crash. I'm not being literal here. You said something that I think is immensely powerful. I'd like to use as a segue, which is that we find ourselves through movement. I think this is so true, and not just for people who are trying to figure out what athletic or exercise endeavors are best for them, but certainly there.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'd like to contrast jogging and running. Yesterday, you mentioned a few things that, to me, just feel like gems, because jogging Like I said, I'll try and run far-ish for me. I go by time about an hour once a week, 30 minutes on another day, and let's just say about a 15 minute, not all out, but close to all out on a separate day.

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I've tried ad nauseum to figure out whether or not it's best to heel strike and roll, whether or not it's best to land on the toe, whether or not it's best to lift the knee. I mean, for the uninformed who goes to the internet, you can get answers about this all sorts of ways. Let's start with the slowest movement possible, which is walking.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Let's forget about speed walking for sake of this conversation for a number of reasons. Race walking. Race walking. Excuse me. Race walking. See, I even forgot the name of it. No disrespect to race walkers. No disrespect to race walkers, but most people don't seek to race walk, I think. But let's talk about walking. Yeah. When we walk, do we heel to toe roll naturally?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Thank you. Great to be here. We go back a little ways. And you're the guy that they call in to make athletes or pretty much anybody faster, stronger, healthier, and more powerful. And who wouldn't want that? Athletes or otherwise. Let's start by talking about running. You know, I think for a lot of people, they hear running and they're like, oh no, running hurts, running's painful.

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Do we middle of foot to toe roll? And then let's proceed to jogging, running, and then let's step up through the various gear systems.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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We should clarify for people, dorsiflexion is when your toes come close up towards your shin. Correct. You're narrowing that angle between your foot and your front lower part of your lower limb. And plantar flexion is the opposite, pointing the toe. I think... attempting to go ballerina in point, but hopefully, unless you're a ballerina, you're not getting all the way there.

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But I think most people, when they think about running, they think about jogging. They think about running a distance longer than a mile. But even for some people, running a mile is a painful thought, let alone a practice. How should we think about running and sprinting in particular? Because when we grow up,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Yeah, sometimes kids when they run, when they're real little, you know, like three or four, like when they're just running around the house barefoot, they'll like run on their toes. So what you're basically saying, if I understand correctly, is the speed should dictate the foot strike. Correct. Okay, I think that's a very important point for people who are interested in running or already running.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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The speed should dictate the foot strike. That unless there's a problem to resolve that a coach has told you –

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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need to resolve and how to do it you shouldn't be thinking about heel striking or toe striking you should be thinking about the speed that you're trying to cover the distance in yeah and if you're thinking about anything just think about being flat just think about being flat and the foot will take care of itself due to the velocity let's talk a little bit more about body position and running mechanics

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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There may be no hard and fast rules to this, but where should my eyes be? I've heard, oh, you want to be looking. Assuming I'm not in a race against anyone, I'm heading out for a run, doesn't matter which duration, does it matter where I place my vision?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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then the lumbar and everything gets extended you end up standing up so more arched back a little bit more posture correct for those aren't familiar with flexion and extension um unless we say otherwise if we talk about flexion we're talking about assuming the dreaded c-shaped position that everyone seems so good at these days collapsed it toward their uh midline uh versus extension where your chin is up and away from the chest and your um right upright posture

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We learned to crawl, walk, run, and kids naturally want to run fast at some point, fast for them. What is it about running that for you is such an enchanting thing? Why do you think that every four years or so, depending on when they're scheduling the Olympics, Everyone in this country gets fascinated with who's fastest, who's fastest in the world.

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There's a wonderful movement in yoga that's helped me a lot in my weightlifting. over the years. I did a little bit of yoga when I lived in San Diego because they had good yoga classes where they have you do this kind of rag doll hanging over at the waist position. It looks like a Jefferson deadlift for the gym rats or the Olympic lifters, rounded lower back.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And then they have you stand up from that position, but you deliberately start at your lower spine and unpeel yourself from that folded over position, never letting the head lead. But, you know, so basically like a chain coming up from the spine and then the head moves last.

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I mean, it's moving the whole time, but you're looking straight forward last as opposed to what you're saying where you lift the head first.

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That's been tremendously helpful to me in movements in the gym, which I think have helped me a lot, like glute ham raises where you're essentially in that position and then you come all the way up and then you go into a hamstring curl or a deadlift or any kind of movement where I'm going from torso bent forward to up. I remembered it, move the torso first and the head last.

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And I'll just say, in my own experience, the strength increases that come from doing it that way as opposed to moving the head first and trying to then pull the weight up, it's remarkable. We are all so much stronger than we think if we engage the motor neurons in the proper sequence. So I think that's what you're referring to here.

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Yeah, I was told the weight will go where my eyes go. But now I, now I. Where did that come from?

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I don't know. I mean, some of the most useful things that have been told to me over the years that made a tremendous difference would be like this, again, borrowed from yoga guys who brought it into the gym. Then when I talked to proper, you know, people like proper biomechanics folks like yourself or Kelly Starrett, they go, yeah, of course you have to move your spine and torso before.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Um, but one of the most useful things for the squat and for the deadlift, um, has been because it's very difficult to think about many things at once, especially when you're on pulling or trying to squat heavy loads is to move, uh, my chest and my hips at the same time together so that you don't end up doing the dreaded, um, good morning back raise followed by standing up.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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So moving them in unison. So thinking about my chest and my hips moving at the same time, that's been tremendously helpful and tends to put the head in the right position. And the other one is, oh, right, when dead lifting to not think about pulling the weight off the floor, but rather pushing my feet into the ground while driving back.

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And these little things end up making a huge difference, not just in terms of the amount of weight that you can pull or squat, But the safety of the movement is just so much more stable to drive the feet into the ground. And you think, why was I trying to pull a weight off the ground? All I had to do was like push my feet hard into the ground and hold onto this bar and boom, you're up. That easy.

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It's wild how... We pick up bad habits. It's also wild how quickly those bad habits can be resolved. So in keeping with that, back to running, I believe that everyone can and should run, most everyone. There are certain people who can't run for various reasons, but that people who can walk very likely can run.

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And I'm becoming more of a believer with every moment I spend with you that sprinting is more valuable than jogging. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And then they tend to put track and field aside for a bit, but people can jump, they can swim, they can do all these things. But running is so fundamental to being human. What are your thoughts on running generally? And let's break it up into distances. Why do you love seeing people run fast? Why have you devoted yourself in part to helping people run faster and faster?

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Today, we talk about how to do that using what for most people might seem like a rather unconventional set of methods, but for any serious track athlete will be very familiar. because they do it almost every day, and that's skipping and striding. You heard right.

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Yeah, I'm fascinated by activities, both physical and mental, that facilitate the transition into a more difficult activity, physical or mental. I started to think about this when I started working on my book, In Earnest. It's very hard to just jump into writing, but I noticed that if I did some drawing, listened to a lecture while I was drawing, and I do anatomical drawings,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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very easy to transition into writing. I enjoy drawing. I'm not trying to accomplish much with it, but it's a very natural activity for me and just very easy to drop into a deep groove for writing for hours. And then I started talking to a musician friend of mine who, he's a songwriter, very accomplished songwriter, and he does the same.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And then I saw a post from Joni Mitchell that she would paint before she would sing. And I think these transition activities that are natural for us that don't feel as constricted by distance over time or, you know, sometimes I put my drawings on social media, but they're really for me. They're a way of kind of thinking about the biology from a circuit standpoint.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3056.712

It is very personal and kind of abstract. As you talk about skipping, it seems a little bit the same, where skipping, we're not necessarily trying to become the fastest skipper in the world or beat our yesterday's skipping time. We're just trying to skip with more, as you said, more expression, more enjoyment. But perhaps, it sounds like indeed, it can help transition into a faster gait with what

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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we're doing for jogging or for running or transition us right into sprinting. And I think that these transition points for physical and mental activities are very important because these days there's so many tools and protocols, you know, dare I say. And people start to feel like, oh, I have to do all of these things. How would I do this, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3103.273

How am I supposed to meditate and get sunlight and do it? You know, I'm already exercising a ton. Now you want me to skip? The way you describe it is completely different. It's saying, no, you're still doing your cardio, quote unquote, but maybe you do your zone two cardio and you incorporate some skipping, which will make your zone two faster for you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Or your high intensity interval training, you'll feel more pliable, more explosive.

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100%.

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Let's talk about concentric and eccentric aspects of running and skipping. So folks, concentric generally associated with the lifting phase, although sometimes it's the pulling phase if it's a pull-up, and then eccentric would be the lowering phase of some movement. In running, where's the concentric, where's the eccentric? For the uninformed, if you could just tell us.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'm absolutely struck by this stride comes before sprint thing. And I'm remembering back to cross country where they say, we're going to do a stride workout at the end of a run. We get back to the track at school and do some strides. And I'm just chuckling to myself because I always would tell myself in subsequent years, you know, okay, I'm going to sprint, but I'm going to sprint at, you know,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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50% of my all out speed. So I always think of all out speed for me as somebody's chasing me with a syringe filled with poison and I've got to get away. Okay. That's all out speed. I don't want to die. So 50% of that, 60, 70, you know, and I'm measuring it subjectively. I'm not doing this by heart rates or anything like that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And indeed, anytime I've done a hundred percent all out, like in my mind, imagining, you know, someone trying to, trying to,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3382.14

really take my life and i'm running all out i end up with this lower back thing because of the you know it you get hurt yeah um but striding sounds like something that people could work up to how do you know after doing the skip workout that you described that you're quote unquote ready to stride and start doing a stride workout and i should mention that the these workouts because we did one yesterday um

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3405.543

you finish them feeling great. This is an aspect of exercise that I think most people don't talk about, unfortunately, that this leave it all on the mat, you take every set to failure in the gym, or these long runs where you're just shredded. They're not great for... teaching people how to be healthy because people are exhausted afterwards. They're tired. They overtrain quickly.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And then people say, there's no such thing as overtraining. It's like, yeah, if you can sleep all day, eat all day, and your profession is to do this. But there is such a thing as having a stressful life and wanting to be healthy and exercising and trying to incorporate that in a way that feeds the rest of your life.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I think these workouts that we did, the workout we did yesterday, excuse me, left me feeling you know, posturally, energetically, mood-wise. I was feeling great. I slept great last night, felt great this morning. I had a great workout in the gym, as I mentioned earlier. So I want to encourage people to give this a try. And in doing that, I want to give them a roadmap.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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So a warm-up of 10 to 15 minutes. 50 meter or so, skip. Could they do it on lawn, dirt, or concrete? Does it matter? No, it doesn't. Great.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Okay. But if you don't and do it on concrete, no problem. Okay. So basically no cost to this except a little bit of time and attention. 10 to 15 of those, you have 50 meters out, walk back, repeat after a warmup.

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100%.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Always quality. So how does one transition into striding? And what does that look like? This is saying, okay, I'm going to sprint, but it's not a sprint because I'm going to hold back a bit. But how do you hold back and still have the expressive part? Because the expressive part, it's a little hard to describe in words, but...

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3583.092

Yesterday, you were encouraging Rob and I to get us, you know, tall with our posture as if we were being pulled up by a string from our heads. And it has a profound psychological effect. And then you just feel your body opening up in natural movement. You don't have to think about coordinating the hand lift. It just, you're in, you know, like this full bowing out. It's really wonderful.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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When Dr. Peter Attia was on this podcast and elsewhere, he talked about one of the major causes of death, mostly in older people, is they'll fall. They'll be mobile. They'll catch some sort of infection related to contact with the bed or post-surgical lack of circulation. And that's what takes them out. I was shocked to learn this, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I mean, I thought it would be heart attack or cerebrovascular disease or that instead. But that led to this whole notion that I think is gaining more popularity nowadays that part of longevity is maintaining things like grip strength, one's ability to jump and land, and jumping and landing is eccentric control. My mom's turning 80 this year, and she's fortunately in very good health.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

3840.57

My dad's already 80. He was on this podcast, and for anyone that saw that, he's clearly in very good health. But I worry about them, and I worry mostly about a step down off a curb, a step going down a stairwell. that is not controlled and then a slip and then a fall and then the break and then the immobility and then the sequence that Atiya and others have referred to.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Would skipping be a good activity for people in their 60s, 70s or 80s to undertake carefully as a way to learn eccentric control? Because I'll be honest, I've seen some wonderful inspiring videos of people in their 70s and 80s jumping off of boxes doing plyo type work in the gym. I don't know many folks in their 70s and 80s who are going to embark on that. But you can skip kind of small skips.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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What are your thoughts on folks who are in the 60 and up club skipping?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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There's this peculiarity to anything related to health and public health in particular. For instance, a colleague of mine at Stanford, Dr. David Spiegel, he's our vice chair of psychiatry, and he and his father actually founded this area of psychiatry, which is basically hypnosis for the treatment of trauma, for pain relief, for smoking cessation.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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As you'll soon learn, skipping, what most of us think of as a kid's activity, is actually one of the best plyometric activities that we can all do at any age to build more power, speed, coordination, and to improve our muscle, fascial, and nervous system function.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And there are tremendously good data to support it as a practice. It's actually approved by the American Psychiatric Association, one of only four, I think, behavioral things, EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and I think there's another. In any case, The problem, it's called hypnosis and people hear hypnosis and their mind goes to balking and squawking like a chicken on a stage.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How do we compare the fastest person in the 100... meters versus the 200 versus the 400. So for you, is it coaching the 100 that's the most exciting or the 200 or the 400? Yeah, that's a good question.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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This is why we refer to deliberate respiration as opposed to breath work in our studies, our clinical trials on that, which David and I have published, et cetera. And it's not euphemism. The issue is the name, is a separator often. And that's a shame when there's a practice that's very valuable. Yoga Nidra, non-sleep deep rest, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I have tremendous respect for Yoga Nidra and all of its early creators, but the language is a separator, I'm sorry. And there's a public health mission that to me is more important than the naming. Just say that and I'll take the heat for it with no guilt whatsoever. Skipping, unless it's skipping rope, has this connotation of childlike activity, let's just be honest.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And adults doing childlike behavior while not necessarily a problem in its own right. I mean, look at all these adults with social media accounts acting like children and the children acting like adults, different discussion entirely. But what if we were to give it a different name, not with the intention of pretending it's not skipping, but to relieve people's guilt and shame about doing it?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4209.913

Is it bounding? Bounding is a little bit more nondescript for most people. I'm having this conversation with you openly in public here in front of many, many people to illustrate a couple of points. One is that the name oftentimes – people are like, I'm not going to skip down the street.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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But there's so much value to this that I think it would be a real shame to lose the opportunity to have it wick out to many, many millions of people. Yeah. Because it's called skipping. Yeah. It's plyometrics.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I love that. Thank you. And you also saved me from trying to find a name that, you know, plyometric. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

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This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.

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And I should say, by taking a second function test, That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. One thing that people will immediately realize when they go out and skip, when they do their plyometric skipping, is that's a little bit hard to understand just from hearing us have this conversation, but just trust me on this.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4459.18

Well, there are two things that are very surprising and immensely positive, at least two things. One is this expressive component and the way it reshapes your psychology and your mood. I want to set that aside, but make sure we return to that. The other is the cross body coordination of movement.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4477.062

The fact that one knee is back toward the butt on one side and the opposite arm is raised up, just naturally as you skip, this is just, you know. In fact, if you're wondering now, oh goodness, do I actually know how to skip? That occurred to me a couple of times yesterday, because I had many cameras on me. I thought, do I still remember how to skip?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'd been skipping the night before in preparation. I didn't know we were going to skip, but I've always worked some skips in if nobody's looking. I'm a skip in private kind of guy. Until now. Until now. Now I skip with pride in public. Plyometrics. I will. Plyometric in public. That's right. But one thing that was interesting, I would think, okay, we'd get back after walking.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4515.264

I'd think, okay, we're going to skip again. How do I do this? It's basically, I would think about lunging, kind of a fast lunge out. And then it automatically would put me into that motion of skipping. Yeah. But this cross body coordination is incredible for purposes of motor neuron coordination across the body for the fascial component.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4537.162

Can we talk a little bit more about cross-body coordination? Because I'd like at some point to talk about sprinting a little bit, because even if people aren't going to sprint, this idea that when we're sprinting, we're not just turning over our legs faster.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4548.831

Of course, the arms are pumping, but the arms and legs are coordinated in a very interesting way that the forces are actually running like an X from across from one shoulder down the leg and from the other shoulder, which is going to sound very complicated to people, but you'll explain it. So cross-body coordination. When we walk, we do this. Some people don't. They're kind of robotic.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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But most people flow their arms as they walk.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Well, think robot dance versus somebody who really knows how to move their hips and shoulders in coordination. We'll talk about dance a little bit later. You have an interesting relationship to music that I think is very relevant here. We'll get back to that, but I'm seeding the conversation. But yeah, when the shoulders and the hips are moving in unison, it's like magic.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Yeah, naming matters. It does. Especially in exercise and anything related to, dare I call it wellness, anything mental health, physical health, and performance. The naming matters because it can take people's minds off track from the major point. It can be a separator, as we mentioned before. In the best case, it can be an aggregator.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I have to wonder, with people walking around looking at their phones all the time, are they losing the cross-body coordination? I snuck in to one talk at South by Southwest. I got a ticket. I got a pass. I don't mean I snuck in. I mean, I went there for just one talk the other day. And I was walking through the hallways. This is a big meeting, tons of people. And it was incredible.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Everyone was walking, looking at their phone. Now, of course, there's a program that's on an app these days. So you're saving paper. So that's good, right? But it was remarkable. People were like walking. and reading at the same time. So I don't want to make more of this than we have data for, but this can't be good.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Let's talk about expression through movement. And let's use the extremes as a starting point. I find that useful in any kind of scientific conversation. You take the extreme outcome. So the person who is trying to take up as little space as possible, chin toward the chest, folded in, thumbs toward the midline, so-called internal rotation, eyes down, trying to make themselves small.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I don't need to spend another five seconds explaining all the psychological phenotypes that's associated with and the way it makes us feel. Now, of course, it's possible to curl up in a small ball and think amazing things about the world and oneself, but generally those things are not happening at the same time. Let's think about the other extreme and let's talk about him, Usain Bolt.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

4996.639

This will also be a fun opportunity for people to learn a little bit more about Usain. Let's start there. What is so special about Usain Bolt besides the fact that he's still the fastest man in the world? And what about his willingness to express himself do you think contributed to becoming the fastest person in the world?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And every four years, people become obsessed with it. That person is generally, the winner is characterized as the fastest person on the planet. Because like you said, it's all out. And at the same time, I think most people can't really conceive in a concrete way what sprinting 100 meters really is about. And the world record is held by... Usain Bolt. And the record is somewhere... 9.58 seconds.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

5016.911

Not just feeling great that he's the fastest guy in the world and therefore who wouldn't feel great?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And yesterday you told me that means it's about 40 strides to cover 100 meters.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs, or forever chemicals, are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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As I've discussed on this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues and many other health concerns. So it's really important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of our place. Our place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Stu McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians across nine Olympic games, and he has coached the players and coaches of every major professional sport. He explains how skipping and something called striding are zero cost activities that we all can and should include in our weekly fitness routine.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it's pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and that it doesn't degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Two very different things. One, there's a self-conscious awareness piece, the showing you. I'm going to show you this, as opposed to just doing it for the feel of it. Is that the distinction?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Our place now has a full line of Titanium Pro cookware that uses this first of its kind titanium nonstick technology. So if you're looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and pans, go to fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code Huberman for 10% off your order. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can experience this fantastic cookware with zero risk.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Really was. Really feel blessed to have been there. And by the way, folks, if you have never been to a track meet, for many reasons, it's one of the most wonderful things. First of all, it will give you an example of what real coordination is all about. And I'm not talking about physical coordination, although that too. You'll be watching the pole vault.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

6244.718

And then you'll shift your eyes to the right and there'll be another event starting right as the pole vault ends and then another one. It's a beautifully orchestrated event done properly as they do in Eugene and elsewhere. The other piece is that nobody goes to track meets unless they love track, although hopefully a few people who are not familiar with track will try it.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And so the amount of spirit there is incredible. And There's also, I don't know, there's a lot of identification with individuals there that even if you've never seen them run or anything, you pick up on the different personalities of the runners and the jumpers and the throwers. And it's really special. Check out a track meet if you can. You won't be disappointed. You won't be disappointed.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

6294.218

And I don't work for USA Track. People are like, do you work for Big Track? No, actually I don't. I buy a ticket like everybody else.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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This notion of pressure and peace, you know, it brings me back to this thing about these transition activities, like for songwriters even, you know, who are so skilled, Joni Mitchell or, you know, I was referring to earlier, you know, Tim Armstrong, you know, having these transition activities, you know, trying to...

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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to get into one's craft and the pressure, and then it kind of opens up into peace. And I feel like anytime Rick is talking about working with musicians and I was like, how'd it go? You know, he's in the studio and it's like, they work super hard. They work extremely hard. And then it's always, the story I always hear is, oh yeah, in the last two days, it all came together, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Because they set real deadlines. And I think this is why deadlines are important. This is why writers and artists who have no deadlines oftentimes don't do as well, and maybe athletes as well, that the pressure piece of getting everything organized around an activity, and then the nervous system just kind of takes it. The commonalities here are fascinating to me.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Maybe we all could approach our exercise that way too, that it's okay to be rigidly attached to detail at the beginning, but the goal is peace in the final minutes of it, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Again, that's fromourplace.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. At the start of every year, I set new goals and one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I came up in part through skateboarding. That was my main focus in high school, up until about mid-high school, and then I got into other things. In skateboarding, everything you're saying is especially true. The personality matches the way they skateboard, level of aggression, level of technicality, personality. I mean, sometimes there's a mismatch.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Since I have Wealthfront, I'll keep that savings in my Wealthfront cash account where I'm able to earn four percent annual percentage yield on my deposits. And you can as well. With Wealthfront, you can earn four percent APY on your cash from partner banks until you're ready to either spend that money or invest it.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Every vert skateboarder, big ramp skateboarder now will attest. I mean, everyone from Tony Hawk, because I've heard him say it, to everyone i know that there's there's a kid um jimmy wilkins um who does everything faster bigger with more technical ability than anybody's ever seen he's a absolutely remarkable um addition to the sport and a super nice kid. His mom's a ballerina.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Amazing. And he's got very loose hip joints. He actually guides the board with his back knee, so he can do a lot of things with no hands that most people have to grab to do. And his dad is an orchestra conductor. So if you were to make up a story about a highly technical, powerful, precise athlete, it would be Jimmy Wilkins. And he's won X Games. He's astonishing to watch and so much fun to watch.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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So skateboarding, it's very apparent. But then I was trying to think of some daily activities. So getting away from sport and exercise for a moment. And I was just thinking in my own life, if you wanted to understand my mom, You just have to see her gardening. The way she moves about her garden, the way she tends to it, she loves gardening. It's like her...

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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greatest, I don't know if it's her greatest joy. It's one of her great joys. And so if you could just see her gardening for 10 minutes, you would understand her as a person completely. It's amazing. And I think she's a very good gardener, but it's not that the garden isn't the point. It's how she moves about the garden.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I think that's true for certain people, how they cook, certain people, how they dance. And I was going to say, you know, if you want to understand people at a wedding or a party, Just when the music comes on, you get a lot of insight into people's personality. And the best is always that like older guy or gal or couple that look like they're just kind of sitting there like turtles.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And then they get up and you're like, oh my goodness, they can really dance. Or they're just enjoying it completely, even if they're not great dancers. So let's talk about music and dance for a second. I think we can't avoid this any longer. Your Instagram handle is, was, maybe still is, finger mash.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I thought that had something to do with sprinting, but I learned right before we sat down that you're a reggae DJ and you grew up around that. And sprinting has a lot of Jamaicans in it. What's the deal? Educate us.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How much of how you understand athletes and how they move and people generally in the general population, how they move relates to your understanding of kind of music and rhythm because this pressure piece, right? I mean, like, that's a great song. That's a great concert. That's a great album.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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What athletes nowadays, which athletes are you excited about? Because they seem to have this essence. We don't want to make them self-conscious, but that you're like, wow, like there's really something there. Yeah, who are you excited about?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And so who's the greatest soccer player in the world in your mind, for you? Like the one that, not necessarily the one that everyone agrees is the best, but... Messi is the best player.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Yeah, as the son of an Argentine, my dad's first generation immigrant to the United States, I really put myself to shame by not being a huge soccer fan, but I've got cousins that listen and watch at the dinner table and you couldn't distract them if an atom bomb went off, and his kids.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Such an interesting sport because of this notion that different teams and different players play it differently, right? Like the Brazilians, like the rhythm to their game versus the Argentines are considered a little bit more traditionally more rigid among South Americans as a culture.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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They take them, Argentinians take themselves very seriously. I can say that as a half Argentine. We're taught to take ourselves seriously as people and at the same time to enjoy life, but to take ourselves seriously.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'm just soaking this in because my mind immediately goes to like art. One of my favorite movies is... the movie Basquiat about Jean-Michel Basquiat, not the documentary. I mean, the cast is like Gary Oldman, David Bowie. I mean, it's Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken. It's just an unbelievable cast.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And the fact that Basquiat was part Haitian, he was in New York in a time when New York was pretty gritty and like brought that together in his art. It was like... One part graffiti, modern art, and had this kind of tribal component that people made more of than they probably should have. And you could say the same thing about, you know, Andy Warhol or about Chuck Close.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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You know, when people are just being themselves, but they're also taking their ancestry and they're taking their personal history, which includes their ancestry, and they're putting it into their art or their sport. spectacular things happen. So along those lines, and this is a somewhat controversial topic, but I'm just gonna go right into it because I think everyone wonders about this.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I'll say this directly. Why are there fewer white strength and speed champion athletes? In fact, if you hang around track and field long enough, you'll hear that's the third fastest white woman. That's the second fastest white guy. people are using very specific language, but we could put it differently. Yeah, a lot of fast Jamaicans. Mm-hmm. What's the deal?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Is it genetic contribution to fiber type? Let's also talk about calf belly length, which turns out to not be about calf belly length at all. What I'm saying there is people with, quote-unquote, small calves tend to be fast runners. Mm-hmm. What's the deal? And I realize why this is a controversial topic, but it's like so obvious that it's almost silly to avoid at this point.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How can you not have a conversation? Yeah, let's have a conversation about it. It's obvious. So what's the deal?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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For more information, see the episode description. Yesterday, we were out at the track at Malibu High School. He were teaching my producer Rob and I some bounding drills, some skipping drills. And we'll get back to this because there's such immense value for everybody. not just people who seek to be competitive runners, but for everybody to, I realized this morning, it's hop, skip, and jump.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Let me ask you, sorry for interrupting, but I think, has a white person ever broken the 10 second mark in the 100 meters?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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They not only will have you moving better and having better posture in all your activities, but they also take minimal time and they can help protect you against injuries and improve your longevity. We also talk about the best strides for running at any speed. So if you're into jogging or sprinting, we talk about all the best ways to do that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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100%.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Yeah. So we're taking those into play.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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We were always told to hop, skip, and to jump away from, but to learn how to move properly at speed, to move properly not at speed. I mean, there's just so much value in these drills and what we went through. And so we'll get back to that. But there was an interesting moment yesterday, I recall, where some of the kids were getting out of school and started running around the track.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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It's so interesting how these different cultures shape the future of a sport or an endeavor in China. Kids are highly incentivized to learn a lot and test a lot in math and sciences. And they're really big on neuroscience in China. I think these nature and nurture questions are super interesting.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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It sounds like Jamaica is still churning out a lot of excellent sprinters because of the huge numbers that are fed to the sport and can be, you know, essentially grow up, their nervous systems are shaped around sprinting. Couple that with any number of different features. And we were talking about, you talked about short calf bellies, right? This is the fear of every bodybuilder, right?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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They want long calf bellies, but short calf bellies make people faster and better jumpers, not because the calf is short, but because- Because the tendon is long.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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So, you know. So what serves aesthetics sometimes doesn't necessarily serve the sport and vice versa. So if you had to pick one, you'd want to be able to jump and run faster. Would you? Sure. I mean, I don't, I'm not, yeah. I mean, I,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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suppose that having very short calves would be weird but who wouldn't want to run faster or jump higher you know uh for all sorts of reasons just be so much fun yeah absolutely i i don't have a lot of hops but um this is actually a time to talk about knees over toes guy ben patrick yeah he um uh

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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fought a lot of adversity to encourage people, including a lot of exercise physiologists and the people who do rehab from various aspects that, you know, putting your knees out over your toes is okay. Caught a lot of heat, but I think the fact that he's so skilled at jumping and dunking and landing and backbends and things of that sort puts them all to shame, frankly.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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I think most people understand now that Ben is really onto something with this. One of the things that he's a big proponent of is a lot of eccentric loading, but also not being afraid to get that knee way out over the toe. What is the deal with running form, as it were? Is the idea that if you can get your knee higher, you can stride further? And then when we talk about knee back toward butt,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I had this question in my mind to ask you, which was, hey, can you spot any of those kids as likely to be really excellent sprinters? But I didn't even have to ask. We watched them go out in a few rows, and then you said, that kid right there. You said, that kid right there, he's got it. What was it about the way he was running? Kid probably was eighth or ninth grade.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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How far back are we supposed to like kick our own glutes when we stride? I mean, what is a proper running stride or is it gonna vary by structure? Well, that's a big question. Yeah, like explain that in five seconds. I'm just kidding. But, you know, for those of us who want to run a bit faster, do some stride work, should I be reaching with my front leg and pulling myself forward on the ground?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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100% not. Please do not do that. And I shouldn't be just quickening my turnover of a jogging stride.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Took one run away from us, and you said, that kid's a sprinter. What was it? Was it his speed? Was it the form? What was it?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Which, by the way, folks, we're taking a couple of jabs at Rob. He's in the room with us now, although off camera. Rob has run multiple triathlons. He's an incredibly impressive athlete. And as an incredibly impressive athlete, we can jab at him every now and again.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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We talk about the sport of track, which both Stu and I happen to love, and why certain groups of people excel in different sports due to genetic and environmental reasons. We also have a very direct and open conversation about the use of performance enhancing tools in the athletic and wellness worlds. This is a really special episode.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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One of the things I learned from you yesterday is, well, I'll double click first on this, the staggered stance. So this is one foot slightly in front of the other. I've been doing this with various lifts in the gym for a long time. I would say the exception would be if I'm belt squatting or hack squatting, I don't do that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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But for everything else, overhead presses, anything where my feet are in contact with the ground, that is, not on pull-ups and dips, of course, but curls, tricep extensions, and I make sure to vary the stance so one foot is in front for one set, one is in front.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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run for the sometimes even in the middle of the set i'll i'll switch them up after um and i found that to be tremendously helpful for building core stability and a number of other things um and it sounds like it might help running gate as well the other thing that you said yesterday that i think is really important i've not thought of before but now i'm doing is anytime you have a

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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a foot elevated in the gym to get onto the toe. Front foot can be flat.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Could you send a kid like that out for a 400-meter run and then meet him at the line and say, you know what, you're meant to run the 200 or you're meant to run the 100? Is it possible to tell whether or not somebody is meant for a particular distance based on how they do in a slightly different distance?

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And with respect to stretching, I'm thinking again of yoga, because this is probably the first time I've done this, where one would lunge. So front foot planted flat, rear foot up on the big toe if possible. The knee back of that rear foot

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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or rear leg excuse me back behind the butt and then the opposite arm raised above that's that fascial um sling that cuts across from and you know an anatomy nomenclature contralateral across the midline and then essentially trying to learn to feel that um

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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100%.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Distant topic from the one that we're on. but one that I and I think a number of people are curious about is drugs in sports. Performance enhancing drugs. There's a new, potentially new,

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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sports league track league which is the enhanced games who knows if that will go through um but right now using performance enhancing drugs most performance enhancing drugs is banned in track but because of the ben johnson thing that was 88 olympics where he was like jaundiced at the eyes and you know it turned out he was taking windstraw and he was stripped of his metal but

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Um, and then the discussion is they're all using it. Some just get caught this kind of thing, or they're using in the off season. How common is, um, people usually say steroid use, but androgen enhancement, right? Cause performance enhancing drugs could be drugs to lower the heart rate for the biathletes. They do that too, right? Keep your heart rate lower.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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You know, there's all sorts of drugs that are banned that are not

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And there I should say, because some people might not be familiar with this, with distance running or cycling, triathlon, it's probably not increasing androgens like testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, et cetera. It's probably... on the things that increase red blood cell count, ability to deliver more oxygen and fuel sources to the cells, EPO, and things like that.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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That's encouraging to hear, especially for young people who are watching Olympics. And, you know, it's a terrible thing if they were to think, oh, you know, they're all using. And I think one good trend in the last few years is there's a lot more openness now in the kind of fitness world.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Because when I was growing up, of course, those like veiny bodybuilder people, they were all juiced to the gills and they'd say they weren't, but they absolutely were. And nowadays, you know, if people are doing TRT or something, they say it, right? You know, I've talked about it, microdose every other day since I was 45, never before then.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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but I've relied on other things to keep testosterone in range. And I take HCG, maintain fertility. That's all checked out. But I'm very clear about exactly how much. The internet has it wrong. It's 25 milligrams every other day, by the way. I'm staggered with 600 IUs of HCG every other day. I said that early on because I was like, I'm not a competitive athlete. I got nothing to hide.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And I'll say that, was it TRT? I'll say not really because my testosterone was in mid sevens, but I was getting fatigued a lot and bumping it up a little bit higher, which is what this has done. has been great for me, but it's the people that lie like the liver King situation where he looked at the camera, unfortunately, and filmed himself saying that he doesn't. And then he gets caught.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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It's like, duh. And then you've got people that are juicing really hard. And it's tricky in sports because, or in movies, right? Like when an actor suddenly is like big and shredded and you're just like, oh, you know, the telltale signs. It's probably not testosterone. It's probably oxandrolone or something a little bit quote unquote lighter, but there's not.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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Nothing light about oxandrolone on your liver or your hairline, folks. So, but this is a bigger discussion, but I think it's important to just be open about it. You know, because we want to see people run faster than ever before. We want to see people jump higher than ever before. We want to see people run marathons faster than ever before.

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How to Increase Your Speed, Mobility & Longevity with Plyometrics & Sprinting | Stuart McMillan

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And it sucks when we find out that they were enhanced and that was breaking the rules.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Esther Perel. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and one of the world's foremost experts on romantic relationships.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1013.319

Do you think that's perhaps one reason why people who are in these cornerstone relationships, of whom I've known many, even family members of mine, met in university, met their significant other, and then had their first jobs, moved in together, all the things you described, that there's this-

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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Yeah, and I think it probably happens at a stage of life when there's still a lot more neuroplasticity, frankly. I mean, everything I know about neuroplasticity is that it exists across the lifespan, but that it tapers off significantly in one's late 20s. And, you know, fortunately, it's still available, but... The notion of being set in our ways is a neuroplasticity phenomenon, right?

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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The fontanelle is still... Exactly. It takes a lot more to open that plasticity later than it does earlier, certainly. And yet it's inversely related to the self-awareness, right? I mean, the younger we are, the less self-aware we are about our patterns because we... just have less data over time.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1071.39

So I could see how it would be more difficult for somebody in their 20s to say, hey, listen, I think I have a good many virtues, but I have this severe issue with something, or this particularly frustrates me, or here's my laundry list of issues, right? Whereas somebody in their 40s or 50s or older, if pressed, could probably make that list if they were really being honest with themselves.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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So it seems like- I think it's a good point. You know, so it seems that maybe there's a sweet spot, but that these earlier relationships, I've always been impressed by them and kind of romanticized them in my mind because that wasn't the trajectory that I took.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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You can find a link to that course in the show note captions, as well as links to her books, her podcast, and other resources about romantic relationships. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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That just feels like such a true statement to me because in my professional life as a developmental neurobiologist, there's a saying, people always think of development and then adulthood, but all of life is one big developmental arc.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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And the great psychologist Erickson spoke about the different sort of challenges that people face from birth all the way until death, which nowadays hopefully will extend into people's 80s, 90s, or even beyond.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1248.038

I agree. If people haven't seen those stages, we'll put a link to them in the show note captions. But the idea is that you're basically grappling with some basic struggle that you either reconcile or you don't at every stage. So you could imagine that these, let's say these three marriages, let's imagine a couple that meets in their 20s and does three marriages together.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1264.85

which implies a couple of divorces in between, maybe not legal divorces, across their lifespan. They really are, according to the Erickson theory of development or any neurobiological examination of brain development, different people in their 20s versus 40s versus 60s, 70s, 80s.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

128.731

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1282.821

So this notion of three different marriages to me seems both logical and very grounded in what we know about the biology of the the brain and the self.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1297.594

And yet it's also kind of a radical idea when one hears it for the first time. It framed in the context of with the same person, it sounds kind of lovely and romantic. Okay, they meet, it's lovely, they have their first marriage. Then there's some challenge, they overcome... They do a second marriage, then some challenge and a third marriage.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1315.659

And maybe there's even grandchildren you imagine, maybe even great-grandchildren. There's all this kind of romantic notions built up around it. But then there's also the reality that for many people, more than half, there's a fracture of the first marriage and that they either remain single or marry again. And so what do you think dictates whether or not a person can go through these

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1338.101

series of evolutions and actually find and create love again and again and again, either with the same person or with someone new or in some cases, I guess, three different partners. I mean, what is the sort of requirement? Is it a willingness to accept this model and understand that who they are at 50 is going to be very different than who they were in their 20s?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

149.861

That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1559.847

Okay, so when I hear your answer, what comes to mind is that, again, as a neurobiologist, I think the brain, the human brain has this amazing capacity to focus on past, present, or future. And sometimes two of those three things, it's kind of hard to think about all three at once.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1577.391

But it sounds to me as if one of the more functional attributes that somebody can have if they want to navigate relationship in a healthy way is is to be able to at least temporarily discard with one's story about one's past and even their past identity. And the word that was coming up over and over again in my mind as you answered was this word you used earlier, which was curiosity.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1604.499

And I'm wondering if what you're referring to is a curiosity on the part of hopefully both people in the relationship as to what the relationship could become and who oneself could become And my definition of curiosity is an interest in finding out, but without an emotional attachment to what the outcome is. This is what we train scientists to do.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1627.201

You want to get the answers, but you can't get emotionally attached to the answer being A or B. That's anti-curiosity. Real genuine curiosity is about the process, the verb action of wanting to figure out something, but... not being attached to a particular outcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1644.968

And as you were describing sort of functional trajectory of relationship, I was thinking, okay, so if one could approach relationship with a willingness to discard kind of stories about one's past, and maybe even a sense of one's identity of past, be willing to let go of that a little bit, and just be curious about like, where could this go if I let the relationship guide my evolution of identity a bit?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1670.538

And that takes some, as you said, some boldness because it's kind of scary, right? Not knowing who one is going to become if they let the other person, you know, maybe lead for a while or if they were to lead for a while. Are these the sorts of dynamics that you're referring to?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

170.117

Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

181.904

And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. Again, I focus on getting most of my food from whole food sources throughout the day.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1829.67

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1850.562

In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1869.792

And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1884.76

I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1903.77

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I am a firm believer that when we are in a stress response,

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1924.11

that we become locked in a time domain and not to spin off into a tangent about this, but you know, put differently when we are relaxed, we can think about time and our life and other things happening around us and others in a far more dynamic way. The stress response is about solving for the feeling now.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1945.609

It has no sense about or it doesn't allow us a window into the cognition or emotions that are related to what could be, even though we desperately want out of there. And there's all sorts of evolutionary reasons why this would be the case. Of course.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1959.739

But I feel like a statement that you made, which is that a curiosity and a willing to discard with one's own narratives, and in particular what you said about the – that people perceive their own experience as fact when in actuality, it's just two different stories.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

1978.35

Neither person is correct or one person, you know, but people have these stories which are almost confabulation at some point, but they feel so true to all of us. when we experience them. I also feel like that's a lot of what's happening in culture at large. Diametrically opposed camps really believe that the same thing is a reflection of two completely different series of facts.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

199.893

But I typically eat a David Barr in the late afternoon when I get hungry between lunch and dinner, sometimes also mid morning if I get hungry then. And sometimes I'll use it as a meal replacement, although not a complete meal replacement, it can get me to the next meal. So if I need to eat in a couple of hours, but I'm really hungry, I'll eat a David Barr.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2000.781

And it seems almost unsolvable at the level of culture, there's just too many people, but at the level of two individuals, I feel like it ought to be tractable.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

215.779

As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great. It's more like a cookie consistency, kind of a chewy cookie consistency. which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2199.622

Yeah, people are incredibly prone to confabulation based on these unconscious things going on. And it's kind of a scary thought.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

23.419

She's also the author of bestselling books such as Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs. Today's discussion focuses on what it means to be in a truly functional romantic relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2301.771

I mean, and in reality, most people... are terrible at understanding how they themselves feel, let alone someone else's intentions. I mean, if somebody apologizes and says, listen, I'm truly sorry, I screwed up. And the other person says, I don't believe you. I think what they're really saying You can tell me if I'm wrong, is I don't feel better as a consequence of your apology.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

232.827

So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, but no sugar.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2343.052

So let's say that the apology also includes that I really messed up. it makes total sense that you would be upset. You know, we had an agreement that we would meet at 7 and I didn't get home until 9 and I didn't notify you until 8. I would be upset too. That's totally justified. That sucks. That's got to really suck. At that point, if the other person still feels like it's still frustrating,

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2377.816

Presumably it's because either this is a pattern So this one apology doesn't encapsulate all the other, the sort of litany of other things that relate to this, of feeling unseen or unappreciated. There's often a lot more behind the event.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2395.394

Right. Or, yeah, it could be a pattern of apologies that don't equate to change, or it could be a pattern of an apology that doesn't encapsulate all the other things that weren't voiced. Because sometimes people won't voice their grievances. because they, for whatever reason, but there's a lot of resent that's built up, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2413.649

So in that moment when somebody tells another that they are not convinced, emotionally convinced, what are the tools that you give each in order to be able to navigate that sticking point?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

252.214

Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and bodily function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration is known to diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order to stay hydrated. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2565.282

Interesting.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2581.604

I'm just going to hover there for a second because I agree that apology is such an interesting and important concept. And you mentioned that accepting somebody's apology at an emotional level, not just saying, thank you, I accept your apology, but really internalizing that and allowing space for it to shift your experience of the thing that hurt.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2622.483

I appreciate that distinction now that you've given it. I mean, I appreciate you giving that distinction. I did not make that distinction before.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2656.31

Is that right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2658.493

Because to do so would what for them?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2700.388

I find that so much of being an adult, again, in quotes.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2705.029

Yes, yes, you would hope.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2707.57

Involves the disambiguating two things. One is we're taught to really trust our own experience to some extent, to stand our ground when we know A is true and B is false. But then also part of being an adult is admitting when we're wrong. And there's no rule book, no real time rule book for that, especially given that people have different versions of the same thing often. But it seems to me that,

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

271.981

Drinking element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. So to make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning. I drink that basically over the first half hour or so that I'm awake.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2745.277

One of the great challenges, not just in romantic relationship, but in relationships of all kinds, is to really be able to slow down and enter the state of mind and body that allows us to do the kind of processing you're talking about. So at a very practical level, I'm curious.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2761.011

Let's say a couple comes into your office and they're dealing with either a single hurt or a litany of hurts or something like that. Do you believe it's important for them to shift out of their emotional state to be able to process differently? Do you have them at the beginning of a session, do you have them do a couple deep breaths together?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

2781.322

Do you have them recall a time when they felt particularly bonded? Is there an effort to shift their somatic state in order to bring their mind to a place of more curiosity? Or is going straight to the issue often the best way in?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

288.592

And I'll tend to also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and I'm losing water and electrolytes. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

301.243

Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, drinkelement.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3017.331

What a great question.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

320.106

I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3228.359

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3237.326

While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3255.259

Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3275.598

Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3297.783

Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3305.465

I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

332.895

We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3323.57

Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. There's something that I really want to revisit that you said. You said it incredibly clearly. but I have never heard this described.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3344.259

And I think it's so, so very important for people to hear and internalize, including me, that I'm going to ask us to visit it again, but not because you weren't clear, but just because I think it- No, I'm curious, what is it?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3357.896

As a biologist, when we teach biology, the good biologists, good teachers, we emphasize names only because people need to know them. This is called that, this is called that, but it's all about verbs. It's all about processes and dynamics. And what you just described as the three verb states of conflict, I think I've never heard articulated that way.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3383.371

So you described, if I understand correctly- Pursuer, pursuer. Right. Either one person pursuing another.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3392.941

Loggerheads.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3395.404

Okay. Two arrows pointing at one another.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3398.327

And not in a good way.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

34.923

We discuss this from the standpoint of identity, that is how people both try to hold onto and evolve their identities within a relationship and how a truly functional romantic relationship indeed evolves over time from a standpoint of curiosity and adventure, but also one in which people need to hold on to certain components of themselves.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3430.972

And in each of those cases, it seems that the first step to getting to a more functional dynamic to try and sort this out, whatever the conflict is, is to somehow change one's mindset from talking about the story of what led there or stories of what led there to really starting to parse the feeling states of ourselves and hopefully empathy for the feeling state of the other.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

351.865

Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3514.187

It's almost like a psychosis of sorts.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3573.793

Sure.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3609.795

It's almost like we lose our theory of mind, our ability to place ourselves in the mind of another in a healthy way when we're in these stress states.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

369.272

If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows. And now for my discussion with Esther Perel.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3692.5

Right. And my mind immediately goes to what you just described as a shift from focusing mainly on the past and how it's making us feel in the present to how we're feeling in the present, acknowledging and understanding something did happen that was real, as you said, and yet with this curious eye toward the future of what could unfold.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3792.978

I don't know if it's a bug or a feature as the engineers say, but it is remarkable to me that the very same neural machinery that forms the underpinning of infant primary caretaker relationship is repurposed for romantic relationship. I mean, I marvel at that, right? I mean, the brain doesn't have like, oh, here's your developmental wiring circuits. And then guess what?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3819.488

You get to hit adolescence and you go through puberty and then you get this new circuit for forming a romantic attachment. The brain imaging shows us that it's repurposed. So it's like if you got a two plus two equals four algorithm in that circuit, let's call that securely attached, although I realize that language is not sufficient, but for just purposes of discussion. Okay, well then great.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3840.191

Then you get healthy romantic attachments as adults or you as an adult, and perhaps you can navigate in and out of things that are unhealthy more quickly. However, if you got a two plus two equals five algorithm wired into that circuit, well, then you're forever looking for something that is essentially dysfunctional. That's the simplest version of this.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3862.901

Yeah, so beautiful work by Alan Shore and others, his work I know you're familiar with, has shown that you image the brain of infant and typically it's mother, but they've done other caretakers as well. And you see this incredible mirroring of Sure, right brain, left brain activity, more dopaminergic or serotonergic activity. Basically, the takeaway is that you see a lot of coherence.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3884.796

What's going on in the mother is going on in the child and vice versa. And there's a lot of reciprocity. But sometimes in unhealthy caretaker-infant relationships, the so-called anxious, attached, dissociative, or avoidant type scenarios, the ABCD baby type thing, People can look that up. If they like, we can provide a link.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3906.587

You see a mismatch in the neurochemistry and the activation of these brain areas. In other words, the brain circuitry for attachment is set up so that anxious states are evoked when calm states should have been.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3920.458

Have there been better parenting? Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3921.859

All right.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3922.199

Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3922.719

But then you take those... You essentially run the same sorts of studies on romantically attached young adults or older adults. And what you see is it's the same sets of neurons, the same circuits. I mean, this is remarkable. Nowhere else, to my awareness, nowhere else in the nervous system do we repurpose neural circuitry.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

393.05

Esther Perel, welcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3946.141

from early in life, you know, it's as if there's a neural circuit for sensing thirst and drinking early in life, and then later it's used for sensing how to navigate a city. Okay, now those are two very disparate things. But this is like outrageous, right? And so I say it's either a feature or a bug, we don't know, but it is the way it is, right? I would say I wasn't consulted at the design phase.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

397.056

There are so many questions and curiosities and puzzles and challenges around the topic of romantic relationships. But what I really want to know is to what extent is the decision to even think about being in a relationship of the romantic type? a extension of our identity or is it really a willingness to potentially embrace a new identity?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3971.96

I like to think in a kind of romantic way that... some of our most important work in our lifetime is to try and resolve these developmental miswirings that are the consequence of faulty caretaker-infant relationship. And you can't blame the infant. Now, does that mean we blame our parents to the point of ostracizing them? Well, one would hope not. Maybe in some cases that's necessary.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

3997.335

But I think... I like to think that what we've observed over the last 10, 20, 30 years, in no small part, seriously, thanks to your work, reflects an evolution of how we are thinking about attachment, that we are actually getting better at understanding the self. And there's something about the human brain that wants to understand itself. So I like to think that in a hundred years,

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4023.658

not only will there be more models of relationship as functional, healthy relationships, but there will also be a deeper understanding of what this whole thing of love and attachment really is. And the parallel I use is one of biology. We understand so much more about brain function now than we did just 10 years ago.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4042.492

Addiction, for instance, not just a condition of failure of willpower, but this understanding about dopamine and other molecules. I think we now look at a fentanyl addict or a heroin addict very differently. They're caught in a neurochemical algorithm that is not serving them well.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4061.638

It doesn't remove their responsibility, but there comes a point where they can't recover themselves and they need certain supports and those supports are starting to emerge now. So my hope is that this is built into our evolution as some sort of vector toward

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4102.94

Right. The repetition compulsion. You get the same thing over and over again. Lord knows I've had that and some wonderful partners. And by the way, as I say that, I'm also taking 50% of the responsibility, or 100% of the responsibility for the choice. As they say, you didn't have six hard relationships, you had one hard relationship six times, right? And I think Paul Conti says it that way.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4126.047

But that, yes, that the repetition compulsion is a unconscious attempt to resolve the core conflict that arose during early attachment.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4136.91

Do you subscribe to that view?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4249.784

I love that answer.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4278.646

we hear a lot these days about the different attachment styles or languages of love. You know, the love languages, you know, people will say, I, you know, emphasize, you know, gifts feel very rewarding or acts of, what is it? Words of affirmation, you know, unstructured time or et cetera, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

428.588

And I asked this somewhat abstract question for a very specific reason. And the reason is the following. I think everyone who's been in a romantic relationship or even who just wants one is familiar with the kind of yearning or interest or curiosity. And then also with the fact that

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4300.277

Or people will, I think nowadays, if they look into it a little bit, they'll realize that they are either, you know, more avoidant or more anxious. These things can shift. I mean, I think it's wonderful that people are thinking about these things in the same way that I think it's wonderful that people understand that there's a molecule called dopamine

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4316.57

They can do certain things, serotonin, certain things. But I'm curious as to whether or not you feel that the naming of things and the assignment of oneself to a category can sometimes be limiting in terms of one's ability to really embrace this curiosity.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4333.395

And you also use the word invitation and you are describing couples therapy and healthy relationship as a bit more of an art form than a reductionist protocol oriented science, which I love because to me, you know, despite being a scientist, some of the great mystery of life and certainly of romantic relationship is when you find yourself in

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4355.592

happy places that you didn't anticipate finding yourself or in a place of forgiveness and close friendship. When at one point you can recall being, as you said, like you just, this person is like embodies the worst things in your mind. So I think I wonder if, the processes that you found useful in your clinical work, is it possible to formalize those in a way that people can start to adopt them?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4385.562

In other words, Do you think that we can learn to navigate relationship in more healthy ways? Not just by saying I'm anxiously attached or avoidant or securely attached. I'm looking for someone that has that or my love language is this and they love to do that. And so therefore we're a perfect lock and key.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4402.603

I think people are starting to think about relationship in a more nuanced and sophisticated way. And yet also what I'm hearing is, It's a lot more dynamic than that. And that some of those categorizations that we assign ourselves can really perhaps be limiting to what could be.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

445.293

just like the development of our physical body, it has an arc across the lifespan that a relationship has a sort of developmental arc. There's the first meeting, the first week, the first month, et cetera. And so much of what I've seen in your work and in the discussion about relationships in the public sphere seems to be trying to understand how we change

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

467.466

in terms of what we want and what we ask for, what we feel willing to ask for, et cetera, across this arc of the relationship. But what I want to know is, is the decision to enter a romantic relationship a willingness conscious or unconscious, to actually change who we are? In other words, are we entering a relationship to just be ourselves and find someone with whom we go lock and key?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4675.875

that expands one's understanding and maybe even lends itself to a hint of curiosity stands a chance of having some rehabilitative quality to it. I feel that nowadays there's such an overuse of psychological terms like narcissist, gaslighting therapy terms. It's almost the way that if people were to talk about neurobiology as neurosurgeons, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4704.609

I'm not a neurosurgeon, but I have friends who are. And neurosurgery is like... It's something people train for many, many, many years for just as being a clinical psychologist, people train for many years for and have a ton of in-office experience, real world experience. Nowadays, the naming and the attachment of names to particular top contour features of people out there.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4727.521

seems to be largely for the purpose of closing off possibility as opposed to increasing possibility. However... It's both.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4804.667

Well, amen to bringing people together more. Yeah, such an important mission right now.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4815.049

I'd like to explore the possibility of something that I've heard, but I don't know if it's true, that sex, which of course doesn't just include intercourse, but the things that lead into and out of sexual intercourse, but that sex is a microcosm for the relationship at large, meaning that the dynamics that show up in intimate interactions are somehow reflective of a larger

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4846.42

working out or dynamic in the relationship. To what extent do you think that's true? It's a concept that I've heard. It sounds interesting. And any discussion about sex tends to, you know, get people's ears bricked up because it's, depending on where you live in the world, it's either something that people talk about casually, openly, or with a lot of you know, electricity around it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4872.895

But I always like to say, you know, as a biologist, we can all agree on one thing, which is that we're all here because sperm met egg, if not in human, in dish, and then eventually in human. So we're still at that point in human evolution. So what are your views about intimacy and sex as a reflection of the relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4894.64

And here, what I'm thinking of again are these, when you described conflict, you described these three different positioning of arrows, towards one another, away from one another, one chasing the other. Is there a parallel for healthy relationship that we can offer up?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

4913.524

Yeah. Before talking about this question of whether or not sex is a microcosm of the larger relationship, the health of the relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

492.572

Or are we really saying, hey, even whether or not we realize or not, if we're pursuing a relationship, are we really basically saying, I'm willing to become a different person by virtue of being in a relationship?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5180.564

And am I correct in interpreting what you just said as that... love and desire are fundamentally separate, that they can exist in parallel, but that any goal of society, much less a couple to try and unify those as one thing is not going to succeed?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5213.239

I'm relieved to hear you say that. Maybe I grew up on too many, I don't know how many romantic comedies I saw, but I grew up in a home where love sex and romance were discussed in very, almost ethereal terms.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5295.08

Do you recommend that couples exchange these documents?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5360.255

Because somehow in them, there's a split between these two things.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5489.046

What percentage of infidelity do you think reflects somebody's inability to integrate this love component from desire component such that they find that they only experience infidelity desire or strong desire outside their committed relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

55.268

We explore what conflict in relationships looks like and the dynamics that underlie those conflicts. So focusing less on specific scenarios, but rather the dynamics that exist in conflicts in romantic relationship across all different situations and different combinations of people.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5717.426

What you just said brings me back to this idea that we were exploring at the very beginning of this conversation, that it seems that so much of navigating relationship in healthy versus unhealthy ways depends on this internal dynamic within ourselves of an ability to be in close, intimate relationship with another.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5737.972

and yet hold on to enough of our own identity and evolve that identity within the relationship to the other.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5807.639

This is a recurring dynamic that you see. And does it swap back and forth across couples, male, female?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5815.282

I'm assuming in that example, heterosexual relationship, but even homosexual relationships, you'll see it switch back and forth, or it tends to be a pretty stable feature, meaning one person in the couple tends to be afraid of abandonment by the other, the other person more deeply afraid of abandonment of themselves.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

5846.334

Indeed I have. So interesting. Again, not because you weren't clear, you were incredibly clear and concise about this, but I think this is such an important concept. Maybe you'd repeat it for us again, just so that people can really drive it into their consciousness and maybe ask themselves the question, are they more afraid of abandonment by the other or abandonment of themselves?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6087.282

And my mind keeps flitting back to this parallel construction of these circuits were built in infancy and childhood and adolescence. And what kind of flashed to mind is when we are adolescents and teenagers, there's this fundamental question that we ask that rarely do we ask again later on. I mean, maybe people do, but the question is kind of, who am I?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6110.035

Teenagers try on a lot of different identities often, and how they dress is one of the ways in which they self-identify. Their music, I mean, the music we listen to when we're teenagers and young adults is forever stamped into us as like some core part of our identity.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6124.617

It has an emotional weight that music that we arrive to later doesn't, unless it resonates with that early music or recapitulates that rather. So in my mind, I'm thinking, I wonder if these circuits that are struggling with holding on to self versus a kind of playful, curious exploration of new things, novelty, which is so fundamental to relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6148.592

And they're not, they're, as we say as neurobiologists, are really antagonistic, that they're really in a push-pull. I mean, there's so many things that we're discussing today that really feel as if these are like circuits that can't be co-active easily, that they're like, we're in this internal grappling match. And what keeps coming to mind- But they also need each other. Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6172.08

They're like the front axle and the back axle of a vehicle. You can't exist without both.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

630.529

So if I understand correctly, we seek out others in order to try and initiate the process of change that we want. Right. But then when we hit the friction point, meaning the point where it challenges where we are.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6338.331

Fascinating.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6340.16

I get it. I get it. And it makes me think that this earlier discussion we were having, you know, is sex a microcosm for the larger relationship? It sounds to me like the answer is yes, but especially the relationship to self. And especially like there's a lot of information in one's desire template or blueprint about how one was cared for or not cared for.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6404.645

right? I couldn't agree more. And I think that there also seems to be this attempt to directly translate from, well, if somebody had issues with their mother, then they're going to have issues with women as an adult. Or if they had issues with their father, they're going to have issues with men as an adult.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6421.275

But in reality, it's the algorithm. It's the algorithm. It's that these algorithms that are laid down in our neural circuitry earlier, they don't care about male-female-ness. I mean, it doesn't change whether or not people are heterosexual or homosexual. It ain't to them, I believe. I think these are frankly, biologically driven.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6441.695

But the idea is that our ways of being don't translate directly that way, that these are deeper processes. So if one had issues, for instance, male and heterosexual, but they had issues with their father, they could have the same issues with women as an adult, right? That it could translate, that it's not always mapping male to male, female to female.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

646.704

then there's a form of resent or frustration. Defensiveness. Defensiveness.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6547.375

It cuts across our preconceived notions that if somebody had a good relationship with their mother, they will have a good relationship with women. If they had a good relationship with father, with men.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6574.345

I hadn't heard that, but that one's going up on X. Repair work is something that is so fundamental to healthy relationships.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6592.503

What is your recommendation for how couples think about repair work? Let's assume that they're still together and there's some at least hint of a hope to recover the relationship. Should repair work be framed as repair? in a particular way to facilitate it. You know, how does one begin?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6617.056

I mean, I can sort of been, we've been doing a lot of threes today, so I can imagine mistakes, misunderstandings, and betrayals, right? There are mistakes like I accidentally step on somebody's toes, there's misunderstandings, two people thought the same thing, and then there are outright betrayals. And my understanding from your work is that

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

6637.253

You've seen many couples, indeed helped many couples, recover from all three of those categories to the point where they are quite satisfied with their relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

678.848

So a very practical question then. What are the... necessary but not sufficient elements that somebody should have in themselves before they go seeking a romantic relationship. Meaning, what is necessary in order to be able to embark on the process with any chance of success? Barring extreme pathology, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

70.512

And of course, we also talk about what healthy conflict resolution looks like, what a truly effective apology looks and sounds like, and we explore the erotic aspects of relationships, comparing and contrasting, for instance, love and desire, how sometimes those things run in parallel in the same direction, how sometimes those run in opposite directions, and how people can explore their own notions, their own models of love and desire in order to have more effective romantic relationships.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7002.602

Beautiful, aspirational, and realistic too. This notion of, not notion, forgive me, this act of, Truly getting outside of oneself to be present to the way the other person feels, irrespective of who was right or who was wrong, if it was a misunderstanding, betrayal, but especially in cases of betrayal.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7023.002

The exiting of, as you said, either a stance of not wanting to look at it for oneself or of self-flagellation. Both are self-centered. So really getting into... genuine care for, if not caretaking, were the offer of care for the other person.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

705.755

Assuming that both people entering the relationship have the best of intentions to make the relationship work, in quotes, is it both a sense of one's own identity as well as what specifically they would like to change? Or is it some other constellation of factors?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7113.37

Yeah, absolutely. And what you're describing also perhaps at least partially explains why sometimes, not always, apologies are insufficient. Necessary but not sufficient because there are certain modes of apology that don't show us that the person who's apologizing is really outside themselves.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7134.246

They're in their own guilt, they're in their own shame, and therefore they're not really present to how we feel.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7170.506

Who is ready for relationship? And for people who are not in relationship or who are, what sorts of questions should they be asking themselves? What sorts of things should we all be doing?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7199.406

Great question. My answer is far too long to give here. Everyone will be relieved.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7242.108

Well, I want to make clear that before what I say next, that if I had my way, we would continue this conversation for many hours, if not days. Perhaps there's an opportunity for that in the future. But I was told, and not surprisingly, that you're in tremendous demand. You're on a live tour now.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7262.637

i can't wait to see this it's all sold out so i'll have to wait like everyone else but um sounds like an incredible experience indeed i know some people have spoken directly to them uh who attended one of your lives recently and they sound like a completely immersive and um experience like no other. So I'm very excited about that.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7283.608

My only regret about your tour is that we have to halt this conversation in the next couple of minutes. And there are a couple of things I just want to reflect back to you that are all from a place of real deep appreciation. First of all, for bringing forward what you've brought today. You're one of these exceedingly rare people with whom when they speak, like gems just fall out of them.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7310.792

And I know I'm not alone in this sentiment. I mean, just in today's conversation, you've transformed the way that I think about relationship, self, identity, neurobiology, love, sex, so many key topics. And in a much larger way, As you pointed out, and I completely agree, the themes that you're talking about are not just fundamental for us to resolve as individuals.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7339.11

They are not just fundamental for us to resolve in couples or whatever relationship configuration people happen to be in.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7345.993

They're societal. That we can look at anything, an election, two countries battling one another, political groups, whatever. At every level, this is what it means to be human, built up from the same fundamental circuit, same fundamental dynamics. And I really see you as...

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

736.545

You hear that a lot.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7366.778

not just a pioneer, but the pioneer of this parting of the veil from what has, I think, until this point in human history, been a lot of descriptions of things, of what's right, what's wrong, this and that. And some of that might be true. I don't know. I'm not qualified to know.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7382.552

but that you represent a real parting of the veil into the next evolution of what it means for humans to interact in more healthy ways and with curiosity and sense of invitation toward more love, connection, and peace. So, you know, there really aren't words to express how enthusiastic and appreciative I am of what you brought here today and what you're doing.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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And so I just want to say, you know, deep heartfelt thanks. And I know I speak for many, many people.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about romantic relationships with Esther Perel. To find links to Esther's new course on intimacy, as well as links to her books, her podcast and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

7501.083

So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Esther Perel. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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If you don't mind defining those for the audience.

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

842.536

What happens when people are mismatched in terms of age?

Huberman Lab

How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

880.522

So that's shifting now towards more often people are observing older women with younger men?

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How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

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By the end of today's episode, you will learn from the world's foremost expert on romantic relationships, how to find, build, and revive romantic relationships that feel most satisfying to all partners involved. I'm also pleased to announce that Esther Perel has just released a new course on intimacy.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Bernardo Huberman. Dr. Bernardo Huberman is the vice president of NextGen Systems at Cable Labs.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Lara lives much more in the moment than you do for reasons, okay, it's her view of the world.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It's her demeanor. Huh? It's her way. Her demeanor.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10018.115

It's very good.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10018.755

I'm focused on what she's going to do this weekend. Yes. I'm focused on what I'm going to do this weekend, next week, the next month, and for the next eight months.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I would personally like to see you enjoying today and this weekend, and that's it. And everything else is going to come to you. I believe, and now I'm speaking in a way that is more paternal than anything else, you have a charmed life. And everything came to you since you were very little.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10042.224

And you exhibited behaviors and so on that everybody was even smilingly impressed with you from the very beginning. I mean, it's not that you were a genius at chess or Rubik's Cube or anything. I know some kids that are like that. But there was something, something in there. And so I think that, you know, learning to just relax and rest. But it's part of your behavior.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10064.184

Since you were little, you had these problems. Yeah. I used to take, put you on my lap and say, it's going to be fine. And you say, well, what if I cannot do my homework? Okay. But you could. Or even my stuffed animals.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1007.756

It doesn't, it didn't captivate you the way that like, it sounds like physics, you know, made you think that there's something kind of bigger, that there's something more universal, which indeed physics is, right? It's not, it is, it explains most everything.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10074.834

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10075.194

Yeah. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10075.875

They're saying that. Needed to be organized. Well, I probably have. Remember I had the grunting tick?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10080.919

Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10081.299

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10081.719

Oh, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10082.1

That was... It drove us nuts. Well, I probably have a little bit of an OCD type thing. I mean, not diagnostically significant, but when I bite down into something that I'm pursuing, it's very hard for me to think about anything else.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10098.191

Well, we talked about it. When you were at Berkeley, once you told me that you were starting to run, but you wanted to run like everybody else was running, I don't know how many miles.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10105.856

I heard there was a guy who had been in the department, Randy Nelson. He's now a professor in Ohio. Somebody just like... off, you know, just in passing said, oh yeah, you know, Randy worked, you know, like 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week. And I was like 95 hours. Yeah. I remember that. You know, but what's interesting is I'm not a naturally competitive person. It was just this idea.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10124.434

Like I've tended to want to know how I've, and I've since stopped this, but there was a long time where I wanted to figure out what my body and mind were capable of. Right. I just wanted to see like, how high is that ceiling?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10136.426

And it was only when I almost suffocated on a scuba dive or when I was working to the point of exhaustion or, you know, where, and then I also realized that, you know, I published a number of papers to get tenure. Like I didn't need that many, but I enjoyed every one. It's not like I'm not having fun.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10152.555

I'm having fun.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10153.395

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10153.616

This idea of pushing oneself to limits. The question is why? I mean, I think there is so much to enjoy on a, on a regular life and the things that we have already. We have to work to get them the way we want. But I don't think that worrying for the sake of worrying or just worrying.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10169.747

Yeah, I don't tend to worry. Well, you know what changed that for me in a major way? I mean, I've had moments. I've had moments. I think I can recall like I have a favorite best day of my life moment. I won't share it here. It's not relevant right now. But Costello helped bring me into the moment.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10186.901

Like he would do these things that like I would delight in that were just so simple, like the way he would like fall over or something. You know, I think that like having another creature there that is very much in the moment brings you into the moment.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10200.533

Right, and you were very connected to it too. I mean, I think that if you were connected to someone that has that property of bringing you down and so on, you would start enjoying it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10208.5

Yeah, the people I've had amazing partners, as you know, some less – than amazing, but many amazing partners. And they tended to be also kind of into the future, like focus on what's not quite there yet. But I must say, I think women in general do it better than men, that they're better at grounding to the present. Well, it depends.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1021.18

Most everything. Yes. And I also think that I was a bit of a loner. It was very hard to find people that, you know, children or young people that thought like me. So eventually I became part of a group. We were four or five guys that used to get together on Saturdays and, you know, go to the movies and so on, and then afterwards discuss, you know, whatever we were interested in and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10227.711

I think that my wife tends to be more anxious than I am about the future. So maybe it's not generally related. Well, in trying to sort of tell her that she shouldn't worry so much. I think that I also suddenly reflect, what am I doing here? And I try to also slow down myself.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10243.641

I think that, you know, yeah, I think you're someone who's running from one thing to the other, I mean, to say colloquially, but it would be nice if you said, okay, I'm fine. You know, you have a podcast that is doing well. You don't have to worry what the podcast is going to be doing in five years.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10258.673

No, I don't think out that far. I don't think about the career piece. I think that I, I mean, I often don't have a plan. I know what we're going to do this year. I don't know what we're going to do after that. But professionally, I think, look, I think part of it was science. I mean, we're talking about a lot of things.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10274.944

But for many years, right, from the time I, like, squared my life away when I turned 19, it was like, okay, I'm going to get things right now. There's always been these milestones. You're going to finish your undergraduate degree. I did a master's. Then you do the PhD. Then the postdoc. Then you need to get tenure. You know, I think the academic system –

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10293.001

was a system of two to five year bursts, like sprinting marathons in many ways to try and grab the next thing to get to the next level. And there was a lot of uncertainty for a long time. I think I'm finally now coming into a place of certainty, like feelings of like, oh, things are good and they've gone great. But yeah, but it's hard.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10315.578

Oh, of course it's hard, especially if you have that kind of temperament. Yes. And I think you need to train yourself almost to, I just had a set of words that are, it's a matter of bringing elegance into your life almost, to live it in a way that is elegant, is nice in itself, you know. That is important.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10335.249

One of the things I learned, I mean, you know, living with the Danes, Danes don't like you to eat standing. They sit at a table and they light a candle. And, you know, it's very nice. It creates a pace. Yeah, the ritual. The ritual. Rituals are very important. And also the other thing that is very important, and I discovered, is to have something to look forward to.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10355.406

You cannot just wake up one day and say, and now what? Right. There has to be something. Okay, that's important.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10361.293

I mean, you know, we all have that. So Rogan talks about this thing about, you know, because he has a podcast, he does four episodes a week, plus he's an announcer of the UFC, he has a comedy career, he has three kids, he's in a happy marriage. you know, he's really into working out and all this. And he, I heard something recently, it was actually the forward to Cameron Haynes' book.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10381.141

I was listening to it and he, it was amazing. He said, you know, you have to approach your life, no matter how busy or how simple, as a kind of work of art. Like you can't just think of it as daily life. You have to have some macroscopic view of this so that you know where to put things. And it's a lot of what you're saying as well.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10401.72

What I say, elegance, yeah. Life has to have elegance, otherwise it's just, these joint moments. Sometimes it would be like that, and it can be very creative too. But most of the idea is to really get into something. I mean, I personally think that when you describe me as being very steady or whatever, sounds very boring too, for that matter, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1042.287

I was only 16 years old, you know, and deciding what to do with my life. Of all four of us, We committed. Some of them came from incredibly wealthy families, two of them. We committed to really be true to ourselves and pursue what we liked. But I was the only one. The other two ended up running the business of their parents. And one of them essentially, I don't know what he did.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10422.274

I mean, yeah. I don't know. I mean, there's a beauty in steadiness because from places of steadiness, you can take good risks, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10429.679

Well, right. I mean, and I think that my mind is not, you know, in a steady, you know, state. But I don't have this notion I have to see things. Everybody's talking about something. I have to see it. I never felt like that. No. I mean, I like to see things. Don't misunderstand me. But it's very important for me to be in the moment and do things the way I like them to do.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10449.395

Yeah, you don't seem to need to go on like jungle adventures or like ice skate across Antarctica. Like you've never been one for like the kind of wild outing.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10458.843

No, the wild outing is here. That's my wild outing. Yeah, I can have very wild thoughts about things that I would like, you know, sometimes they're totally wrong and so on. But yeah, in a funny way, I am a little bit of what the French call an armchair philosopher or whatever.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10476.138

There are these people who write articles about France and Africa without ever having left France or something of that sort. So I'm not like that. But I don't necessarily crave this physical adventure for the sake of adventure. I like beautiful things. And I don't mind repeating the same beautiful thing every year if necessary, going vacation to the same places and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10499.227

Yeah, you like to go back to the same place.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10500.868

Well, there's a difference between tourism where you see new things and so on. I like that. There's also the idea of vacation where you just sit and enjoy what you have.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10511.814

I confess I've not ever done it. And you know this about me. I've never taken a vacation.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10518.578

You should go to the summer house in Denmark. You can spend a week there just enjoying it. That's it. I don't know if I show you pictures from the window. They see the deer in the garden. You know, they just sit there, you know, it's nice. So there's nothing, you know, it's nice. It can be, you cannot spend a life doing that. You know, I'm not a monk, okay?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10537.646

I'm not a meditator that will spend hours on this. But, you know, it's nice to rest, you know, it's very important, I think. And the rituals are important to you. Very important, yes, yeah. The rituals have a, it's also very reassuring because then you know it's predictable, right? You don't want a totally unpredictable life all the time. That's what people create rituals, you know?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10556.986

You early on taught me about etiquette. It's something that years later, I think it was probably in the mid 90s, for some reason we were at the movies together and we saw some people at the movies and they were wearing their bathroom slippers and more or less their pajamas to the movies. And I'll never forget, you grabbed my arm.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10581.821

Like you didn't grab it forcefully, we grabbed you and said, you see that? I said, yeah. And he said, people are coming to the movies in their pajamas. I said, yeah. And he said, that's the beginning of the end to any society. And I thought you were joking. But, you know, it's something I thought about a lot.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10597.012

You also said, and I'll never forget, you know, you're always better off being overdressed because then at least your class that you're speaking to or your hosts, et cetera, they know that you took them seriously. Right. And... I don't think we really appreciate etiquette. As Americans, especially, we've somehow confused freedom of choice with discarding etiquette.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10625.971

It's not something that you hear discussed very much, but what about etiquette?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1063.782

I saw him years later. Money becomes a pretty bright beacon for a lot of people.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10630.754

Well, there are many components. I think the most important one is a societal one. I mean, one of the things that I like, for instance, if you go to England, how polite people are. Politeness is a virtue. And politeness, the higher the social class, the higher the demand to be polite. It's behavior, it's being nice to people, it's understanding what they are.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10652.603

And associated with that, there are codes. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are dress codes. I had a brilliant economist, an Italian economist working with me, and now he's in the East Coast. who told me he went to a wedding in Italy after living in the United States and he went to his cousin's wedding and his uncle said, you show no respect, you're not wearing cufflinks.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10674.204

He said, well, but my shirt is all, but no, no, no, go home and get cufflinks because you're showing lack of respect for not dressing the proper way to this wedding. So I think that there are expectations that people have about certain kinds of behavior.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10686.113

I mean, if you look at, say, the pictures of what's going on now in Washington and so on, you notice that Mr. Elon Musk, who's always in a t-shirt that says, let's go to Mars, suddenly he's wearing a tuxedo because now he's part of it. group of people that are behaving like government officials should behave. You know, you don't go in sandals and shorts.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1069.066

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I'm grateful to you that you... never pushed me to go in any particular direction. You pushed me to not go in particular directions, but never with respect to academic choices. In fact, I don't recall you telling me or Laura, that by the way, folks, that's my sister's name, that we had to do anything except attend our classes and do our best

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10704.008

But Silicon Valley is famous for the flip-flops and the hoodie. Right, because the problem is that people confuse the style with the message. They think that because you wear a hoodie because Mark Zuckerberg was wearing hoodies makes you brilliant. Okay. And I think that the issue of dress codes elicit a certain sense of behavior in people, as you said.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10725.084

I mean, you know, how would you feel if you went on a first date with someone that comes in, you know, slippers and a bathrobe and said, let's go to the movies? It's not happened yet.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10735.571

Well, okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10736.572

So what I'm saying is you don't have to overdo it. You know, that's another issue. And you have to also conform to the roles of the society. I noticed, for instance, that in the East Coast, people dress much more properly than in the West Coast. You go to New York and you see men wearing suits and ties. You don't see that here, perhaps in LA, not in the Bay Area ever.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10758.023

Yeah, one thing that you pointed out is that at any wedding in Argentina, men keep their jackets and ties on the whole night. I've always kept my jacket and tie on the entire night. In the United States, it's almost like moments after people arrive at any party in a suit, they start undressing. Yeah, right. Why did they dress up then?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10776.128

Yeah. Okay, so that's my view. So I am not necessarily someone that advocates wearing a tie when I go to work and so on, but I really believe that there are codes of conduct that sort of reflect many things. And you're also, you're projecting a message, right? I mean, the idea of a hoodie, at one point or the other, first of all, was hurting behavior.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10794.721

Everybody had to wear one because, you know, then you're cool or, you know, whatever. Okay. In adolescence, I understand it. I mean, that's what you do as an adolescent. You do what others do. But as you grow up, you can also signal whom you are by the way you dress and you behave.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10810.251

What do you think about the discourse on platforms like X where you can see a mix, including a lot of academics and high-level thinkers, acting kind of like teenagers?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10820.836

Well, okay, they want to be popular. They want to draw attention.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10824.9

Yeah, this is kind of a new thing. I mean, I won't name names, but some people who are considered some of the smartest people in the world, like what their discourse on social media is like. I mean, they wouldn't last two seconds on the schoolyard, so they'd get hit in the face. It's weird, like grown men acting kind of like teenagers.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10846.491

Okay, well, they have a problem because they want to be thought of as young. That's a whole different story, okay? That's a different story. Now, having said what I said, I respect that some people eventually reflect on whether or not the rules... The rules that say how you should dress to do one thing or the other do not operate for you. And then you decide to be very different.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10868.526

There are many people who are like that and like to be iconoclastic. I heard many stories about, we were talking about Richard Feynman, who actually made a case. I mean, Mary Gell-Mann used to say that about him, to be so different that people will talk about it because he was very interested in people telling stories about it. Bongo drumming naked on the roof, not brushing his teeth.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10886.578

Exactly, all that. Okay, so- So, but he was very good at drawing attention. Okay, that's fine. You can also draw attention by dressing very nicely. You know, it's all a matter of, I mean, I was reflecting, you know, we go to the symphony in San Francisco regularly and we are donors and so on. Sometimes you go to a concert, it's an amazing thing what you see there.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10906.073

Some people nicely dressed, some people dressed as if they just woke up, they didn't have time to get dressed and everything. You know, go there, you know, and whatever.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10914.239

But do you think that, going back to the initial, you know, ping of the question, do you think that we have societally gone, that we're sort of drifting towards, like, for lack of a better word, chaos? So, social interaction chaos.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10928.932

Well, you know, I think the pendulum will swing again. Hmm. The other day I was talking to someone, reading actually, that suddenly not only in New York, but in the Midwest, men are starting to wear jacket and ties, not just for work. Okay. They go on dates like that. So, you know, it's a pendulum. It goes back and forth, back and forth.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10946.946

I don't think we're going to end up in a time when, you know, you have to wear tails to have breakfast or something. I think only the aristocrats used to do that. But I think that, you know, it's an issue of how also how we perceive the world through the eyes of television and movies, okay? If movies start showing that everybody's dressed whatever, you know, people are going to do the same thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1095.157

But I never felt pushed to go into science.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10966.451

If movies start showing, you know, the trends that we see in movies are the trends that essentially society follows, okay? Definitely. So I think that we, this is, I don't think we're going to chaos. It's going to revert. California is a particular place because it has always been a place where people, in order to feel free, they had to dress differently and who cares and all that stuff.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1097.598

No. No. Although you had a little bit of a curiosity about it. Animals. Animals. And I remember I was going through a period in which I started getting convinced that there was very little to do in physics. And I wanted to change. And one day on a bike ride, I think I was carrying in the back of my bicycle. You were young. You asked me, what is the unsolved problem?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10986.465

But it's not everywhere.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10988.407

Yeah. It's kind of interesting that now counterculture is conservatism. Right, right. We're back to that. The anti-war group is the more conservative anyway.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

10997.414

I mean, also people like, you know, it's interesting how Americans are fascinated with English aristocracy and traditions. I've been to high table dinner at King's College in Cambridge twice. You know, everybody dresses properly. They wear gowns and the fellows are sitting at a top table and everybody else. And people love it. And we like to see that in the movies.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11017.941

Well, it's theater. I mean, it's academic theater, a little bit of pomp and circumstance, but it's theater. And it's nice. Well, we have the same thing on commencement, you know, traditions and so on. Yeah, no parent wants to go to a graduation that's, you know, kind of a free-for-all. They want to see some order.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11032.115

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that, you know, there is a place for that. And some people will, I mean, there are designers and so on of clothing and so on that exploit this nostalgia for that kind of elegant world. You know, Ralph Lauren and so it's always, you know, 1960s fancy, you know, club type clothing and so on. So. Do you plan to ever retire? I don't know what it means.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11057.456

I mean, if retired, no, no, because I'm not a postal worker. I'm not a cook at a restaurant that eventually says, okay, I cooked it long enough that I collect my retirement and go home. I have a mind that it works, and I need an environment where that mind can thrive, and I need an environment where...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11077.304

For one year when I left Hewlett Packard, I took a course in generativity and so on, but I was really a bit idle. So suddenly I'm in a context where people have problems and so on that I really like to listen to. There's a social component to work, as you know.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11092.335

So retirement means you're a postal worker and one day you stop delivering mail and you stay home watching the paint dry, and that's not me. Okay. So to me, I'm working and I enjoy it. And, you know, the day that will come that I cannot enjoy it, I'll stop.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

11110.766

And I think that, again, goes with this issue of getting bored with things that you don't like to do, you know, because you've done it for a long time. No, I enjoy my life. But I don't think in terms of—I'll say something. The CEO of my company is a great guy, Phil McKinney, said, Bernardo, I don't work for the money here. I said, I don't either.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, I like to get paid, but if I don't like it, I'll walk. And I can do that. So it's not that I'm doing this for the income. That's what I'm trying to say.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Seems like you've never pursued money for its own sake.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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No. Nor did you ever encourage me to pursue money for its own sake. But as my cousin, the physicist, used to say, money doesn't bring happiness, but it points in the right direction. I would say money doesn't bring happiness, but it can buffer stress. Right. And it allows you to have the things you want to have and you don't have to. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, I think money is an important aspect of our lives, you know, having it and so on. I lived for many years as a graduate student with no money, and it was very painful, I'll tell you. Sometimes I didn't eat dinner because I didn't have any money. So I like having money to do the things that I like, but I don't work for money.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Many people say, well, you know, I invented so many things, I could have started in some of these companies and make a lot of money. I don't really, I don't regret that at all.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I said, I don't think it's in physics, but it's the brain. And you said, okay, I'll go into that, you said. I'll never forget that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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The ultra-rich people that I know who are happy are still working every day.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right, because beyond a certain amount of money, you still have to brush your teeth like everybody else. Okay, you can dream of having 150 toothbrushes, but so what?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I must say, for me, it was an immense pleasure and privilege to have this conversation, not just because Dr. Huberman is my father, but because I believe the knowledge and indeed some of the wisdom that he shares will be useful to everybody about what it is to carve one's own unique trajectory in terms of career and life, and at the same time, how to savor the simple everyday things that make life so worth living.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And you can only eat so many steaks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that we all covered. The question is, what do you do with your life? Now, you want to travel? Well, you can travel. It's nice if you can travel, you know, in better ways than being an undergrad with the backpack, although it can be adventurous.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I had fun backpacking. Yeah, okay. on a limited budget where, you know, part of the joy of traveling that way is you're thrown into kind of street level interactions. And youth hostels and things like that. I went through Europe like this. I wouldn't change that for anything.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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No, I went through Europe as a graduate student. I quit everything. I went to Europe in winter. And it was quite an adventure. In the winter? In the winter. It was horrendous. I had very little money. I stayed in places where, in Paris, where the lady in the little hotel would turn off the light if I turned it on in the middle of the night. It was awful. And yet... To save energy?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, it's interesting. I'm fascinated by human memory, as you know. I know you are as well. And I recall that story as well. I recall it slightly differently, but we're really closely aligned. She says, I remember you used to walk me to school in the morning and you would drop me off at the cut through to the path behind Gunn High School.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was very funny. But I met people that were interesting, and I engaged, you know, it was... I still, every once in a while, I hear from one or two of those people I met years ago. in trains, I went by train everywhere. I ended up in Denmark in the middle of winter, you know. Everything seems to lead back to Denmark. Yeah, it's a nice country.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, now you have a Danish wife, and have for a long time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And have for a long time. Yeah, many times, yeah, yeah. No, I like, it's a very different contrast to Europe, the central Europe and so on, you know, Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway is a very special kind of country and people. Yeah, I like them a lot. Life is very easy there.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I like Scandinavia. Yeah, yeah, it's very nice, yes. Good-natured people. Yes. Good saunas. Yeah, everything, yes. And sunshine, at least in the summer. In the summer only, yeah. Any plans for the next couple of years? Anything that we should put on the calendar, make sure that we get in? No, because I cannot plan that well. I don't plan. Me either. Maybe I inherited it from you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, I just move. I just move and intuitive. I'm very intuitive about these things. I suddenly see something, you know, this quantum stuff. I don't know. I started hearing about it. I talked to a brilliant guy who was in my lab. I said, hey, Gene, what do you think about this? He said, oh, sounds interesting. Let's do it. And we're doing it. I am lucky that I get paid to do that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But no, I don't have plans like that. We would like to organize our life a little bit differently now that we have a summer house in Denmark and so on. I still plan to travel there. I like Europe a lot, but I don't know if I can live there. I like Switzerland a lot. I want to go to Argentina every year, and I feel very close to my family. That's very important. We are all going for an event there.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I hope that you can join us if you can. So those things are very important to me. But, no, I don't have plans for anything. I don't know. I'd like to be surprised.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, Dad, I want to extend a real – sense of gratitude from me, from everyone listening and watching. Although you may argue that they're not going to be interested, this has been our back and forth over the last months as I've tried to convince you to do this podcast. I can assure you that they were, they are very interested. Your story is a really unique one.

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And I can say that both as your son, but also as somebody who's sat across from scientists from all different you know domains and backgrounds not just neuroscientists i also really appreciate your ability to explain complicated things in ways that at least um and we can start to get an understanding because these are hard concepts.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Because that's, I would pick up Kristen Harnett across the street and you told me it would be better if I picked her up by myself and walked her to the end of the street, which is where class was. You were teaching me chivalry. And I remember asking you what you do I was probably five or six years, let's see, first grade. So it'd probably be somewhere around six or seven years old.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I think what comes through so clearly is that somehow you've been able to grab these high level, really abstract concepts and work with them and try and understand them. But you've also been able to lead a life where you're really grounded in the day to day and in reality. And I have to say your wish for me and for Laura, and I assume for everyone else to be joyful. I'll work on that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And also, I must say, it just hit me like square in the face during this discussion that I get such peace and I can really focus on being joyful knowing that you're joyful. Like it's so clear, like you have a joyful life at so many levels and that you've pursued what you wanted to do over and over. And...

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And, you know, some people may have tuned into this podcast thinking that we were going to get into our issues and things like that. I'll just briefly say that, yeah, we've had our ups, we've had our downs, and we've certainly landed up and much, much higher than we ever would had we not had all of that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I told you last year around this time on your birthday when we all got together to celebrate, like, we're not just good, we're beyond good. So anything that comes up around that, I want to just go on record saying that, like, that's water under the bridge, and I don't ever think about it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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All I think about are the incredible gifts that you've given me about curiosity and pursuing my curiosity about... putting new footprints on untread beaches, the early discussions around the excitement that science can bring. I mean, I remember all of it. I really remember all of it and in immense detail.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I love your stories about scientists, both how they soar and also how human they are and how they're fallible like the rest of us. So, you know, there's not a day that goes by where I don't thank God, because I do believe in God, that you're my father, that you and mom created me. and Laura, and that I've had the life that I have and that I continue to have the life that I have.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I just want to thank you for the example and the nurturing and for coming here. There aren't words.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, thank you. You know how much I love you. I think that these words are the biggest gift that I get. And I think any father listening to that, to his son or daughter saying that would also feel the same way, or a mother for that matter. It's a very fulfilling feeling, you know, to have that notion that you feel that you owe so much to what you got.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And also the fact that you've done incredibly well and the kind of person you are. Yeah. So I wish you all the wisdom that you need in order to just go through life the way, you know, you're going. But I think that it's nice to also that we are sort of on the same wavelength and many things. In you, I see more of a reflection of what I always wanted to be as well. So that's easier in a way.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Perhaps it's because fathers and sons have that. We certainly relate. Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you. I love you. I love you too. You know that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I asked you what you do and you said physics. And I said, well, what is that? And you said, well, let me tell you the feeling it gives me instead. You said, you know, the night before your birthday, And I said, yeah. And he said, you know that feeling? And I said, yeah. And you said, well, that's how I feel every day when I go to work. And I remember, I'll never forget that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, our Neural Network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those one to three page PDFs cover things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We also have protocols for optimizing your sleep, dopamine and much more. Again, all available, completely zero cost. Simply go to HubermanLab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I said, what do you do? And you said, I'm a physicist. And I said, well, then I'll be a physicist. And then I recall, so maybe we had the conversation twice, you saying, well, most of the big problems in physics are solved. So you should pick something perhaps a little less untread like physics. And I said, like what? And you said, well, the brain is pretty interesting.

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And then I said, okay, I'll work on that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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No, that's true. This issue of feeling like before your birthday is something I remember saying to you. I don't recall feeling that way every day. I do recall feeling like this when I had an idea and finally worked out and we wrote a paper and so on. You know, it was an incredibly exciting time. You know, well, you know about it. You've done it yourself now. Yeah.

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And so I wanted to convey that to you. It was very, very interesting and important to me that you understood that. On the other hand, it made me feel very isolated as well, not only with you, with everybody. I mean, it's a very esoteric field. You know, you used to walk into the study, look at me, you know, writing equations and so on. And when you say, what's that, you know?

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I was thinking about your study, which was just a door down from my childhood bedroom. I still remember the way that your study smelled. I can still smell it. I have an incredible sense of memory for certain things. I can still remember. But I remember how your books were aligned, where your stereo was placed, your photos, your photo of Einstein, your photos of me and Lara and mom.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I remember all of it. And the sofa that was just off behind it because you're a nap taker, which I inherited from you. But I remember that, yeah, you would spend a lot of time in that office and listening to classical music. Do you listen to music while you work or did you listen?

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All the time, all the time. Yeah, classical music for me is something I discovered very young, very young. My parents also loved classical music, my brother too. And it's something that I, to me, has a tremendous emotional resonance with the way I feel. Sometimes it's background music. Sometimes I really listen very carefully.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It's something that I, yes, I've always had in my life and still have it. I mean, it's very, very important to me. But not many musicians in our family. No, unfortunately. Yeah. Although there is a very famous one.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We've all tried. Huh? We've all tried. Yeah, yeah. You in particular. Yeah, yeah. We all failed.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a very famous Huberman, the great violinist Bronislav Huberman. I mean, there's a picture I think I sent it to you, Ian Einstein. Yeah. He was one of the greatest violinists in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, an incredibly interesting man. He's the founder of the Israel Philharmonic.

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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And that's one of the reasons that the name Huberman is in some street in Israel, because of him. Are we related to him? Unfortunately not.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Which explains the lack of musical prowess in our family. We all love music, but none of us are good musicians.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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No, right, yes.

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Except my cousin Diego.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Diego, he has a perfect ear, so he can really do interesting things, yes. So going back to...

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your childhood, this teacher, right? So, I mean, what was it? You already had a sort of seeded an interest in finding order, in things that made the world make sense. What was the political situation in Argentina at that time?

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quite horrible parts of it. I mean, there was a dictatorship that lasted for a long time, this Perón thing and so on. He was really a follower of Mussolini and people of that sort even in World War II.

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So what did that mean like out in the streets? Like you grew up in the heart of Buenos Aires, but like what did that mean in terms of, I mean, was there poverty everywhere? Were people, I mean, was there violence? I mean, what does it spell

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, it was a very oppressive regime. I mean, you had to be careful what you talked about. You know, in my family, like most of that social class, we had maids and a cook, and so you had to be very careful what you said. Because they would run that information back? Absolutely.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And your grandfather, my father, at one point of the day, was prevented from coming to visit me in the United States because he was classified as a communist because he did not join the Peronist Party. Okay, for the record...

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We are not communists. We are both big believers in capitalism sitting here at this table.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So it was terrible. It was a terrible time. It was a very oppressive time. But he wasn't a communist either. No, of course not. Of course. No, no. He was on the other side. But the idea at that time, it was to be classified as such. Eventually, that information leaked, obviously, to the American authorities. So when he asked for a visa, they denied him. It was a very complicated story.

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I don't think we should waste time to know how it got eventually resolved through a friend of mine who was a priest and a Jesuit here in the United States. But the point being that during that time, You had to be very careful the way you spoke, the way you said things. There was a dictatorship that was very much like the fascist in Italy.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Actually, that dictatorship lasted until a few years ago, because as you know, as you heard, the new president we have is one that actually ran against this whole ideology, Peronism and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Millet.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Millet, yes. I was not political at all, but you have to be careful. But it was a funny time. And when he was overthrown through a military revolution, my parents were delighted, and I remember the celebrations and so on. But that was considered the minority that was against him. It was a social class movement. The working class was behind Perón and what he promised and what he gave them.

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But that eventually died. So the real problem was that there was no real commitment to science as an investment that a country should make. Yes, it was nice to have Nobel Prizes and it's culturally good, but they didn't have the pragmatic notions that we have here in the United States of doing science means solving concrete problems.

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Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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This was in the 1950s. The 60s, too. Right. So this was the, like, one of the biggest and fastest progressions of physics and its implementation in the U.S. Yes. So were you hearing about that?

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Of course. I was following it all and I wanted to, you know, I wanted to buy books about it and so on. I had some conflicts with my father about spending money on books that he thought that were not going to take me anywhere and so on. I mean, he was a very pragmatic lawyer. He didn't understand why I was doing these things. So, yes, I was aware of everything.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And actually, the university was very good. I entered the university. You had to choose what you wanted to do. And after a tremendous crisis, personal crisis, I decided not to go into... law or engineering, which was the alternative my father offered, and decided to study physics. And I didn't regret it at all. It was a very impressive time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I got a good education in physics, a little bit too abstract. So this was experimental physics or theoretical physics?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Both, both.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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In the lab, I was okay. I mean, I was better in classes on advanced. I took a lot of courses in advanced mathematics and calculus and beyond that and, you know, complex analysis and so on. So it turns out you were good at math after all. Yes, I understand math. I'm not a whiz. I mean, like many of my students have been.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I have guys that can do incredible things, you know, that I can do them, but slowly. Okay, I understand. Yes, yes. So, but yeah, physics, yeah, is something that I knew how to be intuitive about it. I had already interesting ideas that perhaps didn't pan out, but yeah.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So the teacher in high school, were they the one that told you that there was, like, a career in this thing?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, he said, you know, you should devote yourself to this if you really care about it. He was a man that, obviously, he was sort of tormented on many levels and so on. You say that because of the way he carried himself physically? Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. He was troubled, but was interesting, intense man. I still remember his name. He was a philosopher.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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His name was Egersland, which is a German name. And he started talking about discovering Christianity and what it meant to him and what it is to be authentic and so on. And then I had a very large exposure to the great thinkers of the antiquity, the Roman and Greek. So it was all, to me, fascinating, interesting. And it was good to have friends that I could discuss these things with.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Do you think it's a disservice that nowadays in the United States, and even when I was growing up, but especially now that we don't force kids to be exposed to all these topics, like we try and track people into something early on. Actually, a recent guest told me that many schools are now just giving knowledge but not expecting kids to do problem sets.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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how soft that mattress is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You know, teaching them about physical activity, but not expecting them to do physical activity. Seriously. Well, that sounds a little bit funny. Well, no, but that's, I mean, that is the direction that education in this country is going.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1727.936

I was a visiting professor in France, actually. You live there because of that, in Paris. And I discovered, you know, the French intellectual tradition is also very, very abstract compared to the American.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, the English and the Americans are the ones that took physics, and the Russians too, into a very, very practical realm and made progress that are very, very concrete, almost engineering-like.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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When I came to the United States, I must tell you, I came as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Let's talk about that. So how did you end up getting into the United States as a graduate student?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You applied. Yeah, I was graduating. And, you know, the future looked rather gloomy. I had a girlfriend whose father was very wealthy. And she said, no problem. You're going to work for my dad. And, you know, she got a factory or whatever.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1864.49

Why do I feel like that is not the kind of offer that you'll go for now? No, no, not at all. Not at all. I've never known you to work for anyone except you. Yeah, in a way. You're right. I'm a bit the same.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Maybe you know the answers to those questions. Maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

1873.918

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, yes. Just the idea of, you know, running a business was not. I was truly idealistic and irresponsible too. But I had a cousin who was already, you know, got his PhD in theoretical physics at Columbia University. He was a professor in France, then Sweden, and so on. So I felt that perhaps I should go to the United States. And so I started applying to this.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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My father was saying, you know, I won't even help you with this. He didn't like it. My parents didn't like it. You know, I was very close to my family in many ways. And so I applied to many places. I remember being accepted at, I think it was Cornell. And I said, oh, New York, that's great. Till someone said to me, you have to take a plane to go to real New York. I mean, you know.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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He loves New York City. We both love New York City.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So in any event, I got this very, very nice fellowship to go to University of Pennsylvania. Who is the fellowship from? The Navy, the United States Navy. Yeah. I'm very grateful for that. And I actually wrote that in my PhD thesis. I was very grateful. I think it was incredible that they were supporting that kind of research. They wanted to bring you to the U.S. to build weapons? No, no, no.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Not at all. Not at all. I came to the United States working for Professor Burstein, who just died at the age of 101. And no, but I was supported by the United States Navy. It was a fellowship by the University of Pennsylvania. But I remember...

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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In my first interview with some of the teachers, professors, there I am talking to them about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the guy says to me, let me give you an interesting problem. You have a ping-pong ball, but instead of being a classical ping-pong ball, it's a quantum one. Could you tell me at what heights will it bounce? I had no idea what to do.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I had no sense that you could turn all this knowledge into something implementable, practical, and so on. So it was quite a struggle the first year. So you had... Theoretical understanding.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Not experimental understanding. Right, right. Yes. Or empirical and so on. I didn't know how to calculate things very well. Yeah. Despite being good at math. I was good. Yeah. Math, understanding the math is a different thing between understanding math. Implemented. Implemented and, you know, creating things. Well, you learn that. I had four years of graduate school. Mm-hmm.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I got my PhD in physics, so obviously I learned how to do it. But what I'm saying is that I had this very, very vague theoretical understanding of what the world worked, but not really practical. You know, I didn't have it at my fingertips. That's what you learn when you go to graduate school, as you know yourself, okay?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So much so that when I travel to hotels and Airbnbs, I find I don't sleep as well. I can't wait to get back to my Dusk mattress. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, it's one thing to learn about the brain as an undergraduate, but in graduate school is where I learned how to slice brains, stain brains, trace connections, record from neurons. And it's a whole other business to get your hands dirty in the thing.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Absolutely, absolutely. And the same thing for me. Yeah, I'm taking courses and discovering what you like and dislike. I was a little bit bound to my professor because he was the one who gave me the fellowship, but I didn't like what he did, which was always very problematic. Did you have a good relationship? It was funny. He sort of tried to become my surrogate father.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But on the other hand, intellectually, I always felt that the guy was not quite there. I mean, he was very famous. He's a member of the National Academy. He was not, but he was very famous, very famous. But I always felt that there was a lack of depth into what we were doing. It was not just him. It was just the solid state physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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There was a very famous, you know, Mary Gell-Mann, who had total contempt for solid state physics. She used to call it squalid state physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

2076.723

Yeah. For those who don't know Murray Gilman, we'll get to Murray later because I had the interesting experience of meeting him as a child, but he discovered the quark, he won the Nobel Prize, in many ways is considered at least as superb a physicist as Feynman, maybe better. Yeah. Lesser known, but among physicists, you know, would evoke great fear in everybody.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We'll get to Murray in a little bit. So did you enjoy graduate school?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, but it was incredibly hard, very hard, the first year in Toba. And also, personally, I was very lonely. You know, I was transplanted into a whole different world. Philadelphia is not a city I would recommend to many people to live in. I escaped every weekend to New York, and my professor was always upset about that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And you went from being pretty well off financially to basically having no money. I had no money. I lived on very little money, as a matter of fact, yes. My parents, my father felt that, okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to survive on this. They paid for a ticket once a year to go back to visit.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And it was incredibly nice and soothing to be back and to be taken care of and everything else, you know, the life in the family. And then going back again to Philadelphia and the reality of just being a student.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Unlike many people and foreign students that were with me in other places, I did not enjoy – I mean, it was quite a cultural adventure for me to meet people from all over the world, to learn what they – I became very close to a Japanese postdoc, a very interesting man. But I was quite miserable. So this was in the mid-'60s? Yes. Yes. Late 60s. Yes. Yeah. I did not like my life there at all.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, I lived for four years. I didn't have a single girlfriend or anything. I, you know, I dated and so on. But I just felt that I was transplanted into an environment that I didn't like. Okay. And that's it. And on top of that, my conflict with my advisor was not serious because they were not overt, but they were there all the time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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That can be tough for those listening. The relationship to your graduate advisor is a potentially wonderful, potentially hazardous one because they exert enormous control over your future, not just through letters of recommendation, but opportunities. And I got lucky in that sense.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Prior to that, he was the director of the Social Computing Laboratory at Hewlett-Packard, and he is, as his name suggests, my father. Today, we discuss various topics in science, including relativity theory, chaos theory, and quantum computing.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You were very lucky. Yes. My advisor was the kind of person that if you went out to dinner with him, he ordered for you. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. He was that kind of guy. He would take the whole group to a Chinese restaurant. And before you said, I don't like this, he just ordered. Once he took me for a whole weekend to his summer house to finish a paper. The guy couldn't finish a paper.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And it was a mess. And his daughter was there. She was 16 or 17. And she said, are you two going to talk physics? I was going to say, no, let's go for a walk. He said, that's all we're going to do. But the physics consisted in him regurgitating whatever we were doing. I mean, I remember I was so miserable looking at my watch, seeing how the heck do I get out of here? I didn't have a car.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I was sort of his prisoner from Friday to Sunday night. So it was hard for me. I never really felt that happy. On the other hand, I had no other options at that time. But then as soon as I graduated, I got out.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was just thinking about how different your graduate school experience was from mine. I delighted in my advisor, as you know. She was amazing. Fantastic people. Yeah, I got lucky. And I got a lot of that from you, which was to, for those who don't know, I left a program at Berkeley, which everyone thought I was insane. insane to leave Berkeley to go to Davis. That was by choice.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But I remember what you said. You said, how big is your incoming class at Davis, right? Because by all standard criteria, Berkeley is the better institution. Davis is great, but Berkeley is considered exceptionally strong. And I said, are there three of us? And you said, well, either you're making the best decision of your life or the worst mistake of your life.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And then I think you asked me what was driving the decision. I said, well, there's this person there Her name is Barbara Chapman, and she just seems to be working on things that if I don't work on these problems, I'm going to regret it. And I can't imagine working on anything else.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And he said, well, go for it, which I really appreciate because any parent, if I were a parent and my kid said, I'm going to leave Berkeley and go to Davis halfway through a PhD and start again, I think... I probably would have balked, so.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, Barbara's also played a very, very nice, supportive, emotional role in your life. I mean, it was obvious that she had tremendous preference for you. Yeah. You were like her son in many ways.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I smile and well up a little bit only because, well, she passed away young, but... She's just an amazing person. So I feel very blessed for that. That wasn't your experience with your advisor. So during that time, I did want to ask about this. I asked about it being the mid to late 60s because it was the counterculture movement.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And one thing that people should know about you, I'll just offer this up, is that in the entire time I've known you, which is a while now... You've been very clear, like you never had any interest in recreational drugs. No. Never did them. No. Even though that was super common then. I've never seen you have more than a glass of wine. Yes. You've never been drunk in your life. Never.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And you don't like football despite being from Argentina. It occurred to me on the drive over, like peer pressure is just not something that impacts you. You're not going to do something because people around you are doing it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, no, you're absolutely right. I always felt this sense of uniqueness or whatever. But I became very humble because of it. I'm not arrogant. It's not that I feel that others are worse and so on. But yes, when I came to the United States, there was a decision I had to make, which is I remember explicitly thinking about it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It was the first time that I was beyond the control of my parents and family and the social environment in which I was in Argentina. So you could do whatever you wanted. And I was not the only one who came. There were three or four brilliant mathematicians and physicists that came with me. And I saw them within a year just losing it all. One of them never graduated. They got into drugs.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They moved to the village in New York, and they decided that that was the life they wanted to have. Problem is that 10 years on, what are you doing, right? I mean, getting to be an old hippie is not that interesting anymore. So I really had that notion at that time that I needed to be very disciplined, and I had to internalize a set of values and to ask myself what I want and what I don't want.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And so, yes, indeed, I used to go to parties. To me, it was quite a surprise. You know, in New York, Philadelphia, you know, people smoking pot and all sorts of other incredible things, getting drunk and so on. It was something that I, you know, I would say, no, thank you, and that was it. And I felt quite okay with it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I never felt the need to satisfy a group of people that were like this in order to be included.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You know, there's only one person that I've ever met in my entire life, now that I'm 49, I can say things like now that I'm 49, who has never been drunk, never done drugs, basically has never really had a sip of alcohol except for once, and that's Rick Rubin, my good friend who's- I like the meaning. Yeah, by all standards is,

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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you know, probably the greatest music producer of all time across, you know, a dozen different genres, right? Not just rock and roll, but classical, country, all this. And I once asked Rick, you know, you worked in music where, you know, drugs and alcohol are everywhere, or at least used to be. And he just said, Yeah, it never really interested me. I could be around it but not participate.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And so the two of you are the only people I know that have ever had that kind of relationship to what's going on around you where you don't feel pulled into it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I also didn't understand, I mean, for instance, the role of drugs and alcohol in young people, I was a graduate student, to a large extent plays a role of relaxation and, you know, getting rid of stress and anxiety and so on. To me, it was very interesting that people would actually come sometimes to my place and ask, you know, do you have something to smoke? Why? Because I'm nervous or whatever.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

2573.522

Well, you know, deal with your state of anxiety, but you don't have to drink to do that. And I was always a little bit also concerned about my brain. I mean, I was afraid that these things would just take me over the edge of the rails. So I just, but I think I was also, I need to say this, I was also rather judgmental of people who did it at that time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And it was a way, by being judgmental, by saying this is wrong, then I was able to stay on my track, okay? Today I'm much more understanding. I mean, I hear people and that's what, you know, it works for them, it's fine, although I still don't like it. And it was even worse when we came to California because here everything was going on, not just drugs and everything else.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, let's talk about that, but not that specifically right off the bat. So you finished your PhD. Yeah. You could have done a postdoc, become a professor.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was playing with that. I was playing with that. My dream was to go to Cambridge University in England, not only because the Cavendish Laboratory was fantastic. There was the whole thing on DNA. I mean, Crick was there and so on. So I thought that perhaps I would just start inhaling some of those vapors. You wanted to get into biology. Well, I was interested.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

2647.052

I mean, because I read the famous book by Watson, you know, the double helix, and I couldn't sleep. I mean, I read it one night and said, it's incredible what this guy did.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Amazing book.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Amazing book, yes. So I said, oh, the whole thing is becoming like physics. It's no longer all these complicated names and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, it's crystallography, which is, you know, I mean, physics and chemistry are so interesting. Crystallography is boring because you have, it's like botany. You have to learn all these crystals and stuff. I'm just chuckling because the spaghetti model folks, as we call them, the crystallographers, are probably covering their eyes right now. But that's all right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They love what they do and thank goodness for them. No, no, of course. Because they design novel drug pockets and receptors. I mean, they're doing some cool stuff.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I thought that being in Cambridge was okay. I mean, you would suffer from not even heating in the rooms and so on. But then... What happens was, I mean, you know, I met your mother. And then, you know, she brought a little bit of reality into my life and said, you know. How so? Well, she said, you know, it's time for you to graduate. Time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Because I was just staying there as a, you know, PhD student. You know, I was fine, you know. Okay. The money was a problem. But, you know, I got to live like this. You met mom in New York. I met your mother in New York, yes. And she had her feet on the ground and said, it's time for you to graduate and so on. And she actually was right. And so I decided to look for a job.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And my professor wasn't necessarily letting me go. He wanted me to stay as a postdoc with him.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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This is something people don't often understand is that if a student or postdoc is very good, the advisors are de-incentivized to move them along to their job. But it's a tricky game because you want the support of your advisor, but oftentimes your advisor, if you're very good, they want to keep you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So there was also another aspect at that time. By then, I started thinking that I wanted to live a much more comfortable life. I mean, I come from a family that lived a very comfortable life, and I wanted that very badly. And so I started looking for jobs and so on. My advisor was not... I'm too keen to, you know, tell me what to do.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So instead of going, I could have gone for a postdoc to a couple of places, but I wanted to be a little more independent. And I discovered that there were research institutions like IBM and Xerox in the West Coast and so on. There were, you know, people could do science, you know, good science. And, you know, Bell Labs was the most famous one of all. That was in the East Coast. In the East Coast.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I went to Bell Labs for an interview and I felt that they were running that like a Russian internment camp almost. I mean, it was unbelievable. We were 10 of us and they took us around and people were taking notes of what you were saying and asking and so on, telling us that was an elite place. It was an elite place.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So East Coast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The East Coast institutions, I mean, it makes sense to me now why, having been raised in the Bay Area, that East Coast institutions and I are just never going to mix because they love tradition, they love hierarchy, and they love history, whereas on the West Coast, It's all about the startup, the IPO.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It's about what happened in the last three years and what's going to happen in the next 10 years.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right. Well, on the other hand, there is something nice to be said about the European model of universities in the sense that the biggest contrast, you say this, I remember when professors came to colloquium and so on, they were wearing suit and tie at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school and so on. I came to Stanford.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I went to the first colloquium and the students were coming in shorts with their dogs into the auditorium. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was such an incredible, you know, change, cultural change. But smart. But smart, I mean. Oh, incredibly smart. Incredibly smart. No doubt about that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So, in any event, I discovered something which historically became incredibly important, although I was marginally involved in it, which was Xerox Corporation had invented a copier, decided that they were going to get into the information age, and they decided to establish a new research center in Palo Alto next to Stanford.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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where they would recruit people that would work on this whole thing, computers and information and physics and so on. And I came in and the guys, you know, whoever interviewed me, they said, oh, this is exactly the place for you. So that's what I did.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman. Dr. Bernardo Huberman, welcome. Thank you, Andrew.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And the interesting thing was that while I was there doing what I thought was interesting things, there was a whole group of people, very small, that invented the personal computer. Steve Jobs saw it and built the first Mac out of the alcohol.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I had a classmate in high school, Becca Canara. Yes. I remember because she wrote a Vespa at a school. Yeah, her mother was involved in that stuff. And her mom was involved in creating the, it was Adele. Adele, yes. Adele Goldberg, yes. Adele Goldberg, and developing the ability to move what appear to be pages on the screen.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Object-oriented languages. I had no idea that was going on. I'll be honest with you. I mean, it was going on the second floor. They were all hippie-like. I mean, it was a scandal of the life that they had there. It was the 70s. And still, the Bay Area was not what it is now. I mean, everybody went to risottis, you know, take long lunches. And there was a lot of stuff on drugs and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, can I ask a question about that? So Xerox PARC was this incredible place. I remember going there when I was a kid to your lab. Actually, one of my earliest recollections was you took me into your and Jim Boyce's lab. experimental lab. You told me to pick a piece of fruit. There was a bowl of fruit. I picked a banana.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You took out the banana, you peeled it and you dipped it into liquid nitrogen. And then you told me to throw it on the ground and we shattered the banana. And I thought that was like the coolest thing ever. I remember that. So that was happening. But you mentioned the stuff that was happening about developing computer interfaces.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And that indeed Jobs borrowed or stole, mostly because Park didn't protect the intellectual property well. I mean, he didn't do it illegally. I mean, he saw it. They basically gave it away. They basically gave it away, right? Xerox was thinking that, you know, copiers were the future. That's it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But I also recall, because I overheard the conversations between you and mom when I was a kid, perhaps, that there were... It was pretty wild at Park. Like, there was this whole, like, the room with the beanbags. People were taking...

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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lsd and other drugs that wasn't your scene though no no no not at all i was in the physics lab and we can talk later a little bit about it with gene boys was a very very interesting collaborator of mine and so on we had a lot of fun but not not on that level as a matter of fact we were considered very square people uh you know doing what we were doing i mean this is a group of people that were truly they i mean books have been written on on this whole class of people that became really

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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the embryo of what Silicon Valley became. There were brilliant people trying to do new things, Adele, Alan Kay, there were many of them.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Did you ever want to get involved in that stuff?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I used to see them as so, I'll tell you how I got involved. The head of the group, Bob Taylor, a very charismatic man who was responsible for the development of the personal computer, He was the head of the computer science lab. He once heard that I played ping pong. So he started challenging me to ping pong. So we used to play ping pong.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And the conversations were so odd because I would say, oh, you do computer science. I have some mathematical problems. I would like some guys in your lab to help me. He said, we are not the kind of computer scientists you imagine, like at IBM with a white coat fixing machines and solving math. We want to revolutionize the world. We want to change the way you think. He used to say that to me.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I sort of understood a little bit of it, but quite frankly, it seemed totally out of whatever I was doing.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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This is when Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, et cetera, A16Z, now when he was sitting in the very seat you're sitting in here, he described this notion of wild ducks, that at companies you have these people that are small groups of people that are really kind of wild and outrageous and really testing the outer limits of what's possible. Do you think they serve an...

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Tremendous, tremendous. And I was a little bit of that in my field at that time. I was the first one to realize, you know, that once I saw these machines, I could use them for doing things even in physics that no one could do. And the kinds of fields that I chose to work on were totally out of what people were doing at Xerox or IBM and so on. I think that these people are essential.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And also great to see you, Dan. Same here. I guess no premonition would have foreseen this one. No, absolutely not. And people might notice today I'm drinking out of a mate gourd, in part in honor of my father's father who drank out of his loose leaf mate every morning. My first sip of mate was taken sitting in his lap when I was maybe four years old. Yes, yes. In my Spider-Man pajamas.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, the question is, what does a company or a university do? What do they do with those ideas and so on? Xerox lost it completely. I mean, they showed them the stuff and there's a whole books that have been written about it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, one thing that I think I'm realizing now I inherited from you consciously or unconsciously is that while I've been more of a risk taker with various aspects of my life than I probably should have been, but that I've always enjoyed being near people

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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um people who are really pushing the boundary on something like my love of like skateboarding but not just skateboarding but our friend anyway jumping the great wall of china building mega ramps in his yard i knew i wasn't going to do that but there's something about being adjacent to people like that yes that changes the way that you that i've approached things that um were more um

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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pedestrian, to make them less pedestrian. And maybe we'll return to this because I think that being around people who are real mavericks and real iconoclasts can be very beneficial, but it doesn't mean that you have to jump in and do what they're doing.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, I decided at one point to take huge risks. And as a matter of fact, my first piece of work after I got my job at Xerox PARC, which was supposed to work on some solid state physics or whatever, was I had this notion, this fantasy of Einstein in the patent office. So I would start working on things that were crazy.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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There's a whole notion in physics, which is called tachyons, particles that are faster than the speed of light. How do you say it? Tachyons. Tachyons. It's from the word tachyons, which means fast, swift, means particles that are faster than the speed of light, which is impossible. But some physicists were playing with that idea. And I became very interested in that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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As a matter of fact, my first paper, out of graduate school was on tachyons, and I had the pride of getting the paper accepted in the top physics journal. His physics review letters? Physics letters, yes. And I remember my cousin Hector sending me a note or something saying, well, now I see the road to perdition, he said. But I was so proud of it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I really thought that I was doing something incredible. And it had nothing to do with the work I was doing on a daily basis. And I published several papers on things that were very important to me.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You have a lot of single-author papers. Yes, yes. This is something that is especially rare in biology, but you have a lot of single-author papers. Yeah, yeah. I was very proud of that. Yes, yes. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Today's episode is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now, I'm familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Several years ago, I had one of my bank accounts hacked, and it was a terrible amount of work to have that reversed and for the account to be secured.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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In any event, let's talk about science. You're born in Argentina. As I recall, because once we had a conversation about it, you had a teacher, maybe it was in high school, who turned you on to physics, which became your field of choice. But prior to that, were you interested in different subjects?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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When that happened, I talked to my friends in the tech community, and what they told me was that even though you think your internet connection may be secure, oftentimes it's not, especially if you're using Wi-Fi networks such as those on planes, in hotels, at coffee shops, and other public places. Surprisingly, even at home, your data might not be as secure as you think.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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To make sure that what I described before would never happen to me again, I started using ExpressVPN. The great thing about ExpressVPN is that I don't even notice that it's running, since the connection it provides is so fast. I have it on my computer and on my phone, and I keep it on whenever I'm connected to the internet. With ExpressVPN, I know everything is secure.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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My web browsing, all my passwords, all my data, and of course, anything that's behind an account wall, like a bank account. It can't be tracked and no one can access or steal your data, which is terrific. If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com slash Huberman and you can get an extra three months free.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Huberman to get an extra three months free. Can I ask you a question as a slight departure, but as something I've always wanted to ask you? And feel free to say no if it's not something that could be done in a couple of minutes. So many people hear Einstein's name, they think of the hair, they think of relativity.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Is it possible to explain relativity in a way that the everyday person can get it a little bit better than they perhaps understand it now?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes. As a matter of fact, I learned not long ago that Einstein himself wrote a popular book on relativity that seems to be very, very accessible. Now, there are two aspects to relativity. I mean, there are two things that our brains were not made by evolution to understand intuitively. One is relativity, and the other one is quantum physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We know we have intuitions, like an animal, for instance, if you see a lion running after a zebra and so on, the lion can actually calculate intuitively the speed at which he can move and so on. We can do the same. But if you start thinking about what happens when you get to near the speed of light, we have no intuition whatsoever. Time almost stops.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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There are all sorts of complicated things, length contract. I mean, it's a very complicated set of things, and that's why it's very hard to understand, although the math works. Then there is general relativity that is even worse because there is some kind of a warping of space-time that is responsible for gravitation. But I'll go into that in a second. The other one is quantum physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Our brains are not... Not only are they not wired to understand near the speed of light, because no one moves near the speed of light. I mean, we move at speeds that are fairly small compared to the speed of light. And quantum mechanics is at such a microscopic level that is below, basically, the level of a molecule. It's molecules, atoms, and inside the atom.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So it's very, very hard to visualize or even understand some of the very counterintuitive ideas like entanglement and also, you know. Relativity can be understood in the sense that you can explain certain things, but people say, well, how can counting work like that? And then you have to get into the math, okay?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But I think that—I took a course a few years ago on generativity, and I just— It's profound? Yeah, yeah. I wanted to learn it finally. It's profound, deep. And it makes you feel that this man, Einstein, he had help from a lot of people, but still, it's an incredible thing. I mean, you know, it's on a level of Beethoven's symphonies and Mozart's piano concertos.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But I'd like to assure you that even if you have zero background in physics, computer science, or mathematics, that entire discussion will be clear to you as to what those things are and even some of how they work.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, it's something that comes into your head and you're able to do you know, through a lot of struggle. I mean, it took him years to do that. Okay, so, but it's profound.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I don't recall if you had an avid interest in academics or you just did it because you were supposed to prior to that teacher. Then we'll talk about him.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, when you say, can you explain, I mean, the point is Einstein one day discovered that if the speed of light is the speed of light, no matter how fast you move with respect to a beam of light, it's still moving at the speed of light. That means that the notion of simultaneity between two events is relative now.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So you and I might say, yes, now is 1.10, but if you are moving very fast with respect to me, instead of 1.10, you'll say something else, okay? Just because time for you and I are not synchronized. And that leads to all sorts of very interesting effects and practical effects, too, because from there comes the idea that mass and energy are the same. From there, nuclear weapons came out of that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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All sorts of very interesting things, you know. And today, you know, we can even detect gravitational waves that are coming from almost the beginning of the universe. We can detect that. because of those theories they can calculate. So it's profound, yes. I mean, Einstein, I think, stands on... I mean, Newton, too, by the way.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, you know, Newton, Einstein, I think they're top people, you know. But they talk to God, in a way, as they say.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, yes. I was always very interested in ideas and so on. Science at that time was a bit vague, but I read a lot of philosophy. I didn't understand much of what I read, but nevertheless, I kept reading it. I was interested in psychology. I was an avid reader. As a matter of fact, I embarrassed my father or actually made him disappointed for a birthday. I think I was 14 years old.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We'll get back to God a little bit later. Yeah, it seems to me that even though it's very hard to grasp... It's worth asking for those of us that don't have an intuitive sense of relativity theory that is starting to peer into these things a little bit, trying to understand them. Do you think that it gives one's mind an ability to tap into forms of cognition that we don't normally think about?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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when we're looking at macro mechanics of the world around us, that objects fall down, not up. And, you know, a helium balloon goes up, okay, and you can learn something about helium. But it's all pretty straightforward with just a few simple bullet points.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Whereas when you get into quantum mechanics, yeah, it challenges the mind in a way that it really feels like for most people there's a cliff, and we just kind of go, okay. And obviously there's trust there, but for people that are curious about understanding the really tiny bits of the physical universe linked up with the really big bits of the physical universe, where's the best place to start?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, OK, you're asking a very, very interesting question, which is, for most of us who are training physics, we learn how to calculate. We learn how to operate with these things. I just got a patent on using quantum mechanics for communication and so on. But it is still the puzzle is why does it work the way it works?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So what I'm saying is you learn an operational way of doing these things operationally. I don't know what happens in your brain because I have ideas that come out of intuitions, not just formulas and equations, and yet I don't necessarily think I understand deeply why these things are the way they are. They are the way they are. And there's no reason why they shouldn't be like that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Our brains, as I said before, they are essentially conformed to understand the macroscopic world, not high speeds and so on. physicists who work in general relativity, I don't, can do incredible calculations. Can you tell you what a black hole collapsing into another black hole would do? And, you know, they're using general relativity things, and so they can do it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, what it does to your brain that allows you to operationally work with these equations and solve it and have new ideas It's something I don't understand. Namely, for instance, the example that I gave about quantum mechanics, that's a very simple one because I talk to a lot of people nowadays that work on this, is I can give you two dice, okay, you know, just dice.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You can go to Mars and I stay here. The dice are, let's assume they are quantum mechanically entangled. I throw my dice, I see three, you got three. And we don't communicate. They're entangled. They go, this is faster than the speed of light. I throw again five, you get five. I do one, you get one. I mean, it's an amazing thing. What is the origin of the entanglement?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It's a property of quantum systems that they can get entangled. That's the word. And somehow what happens to your system affects mine, but doesn't affect it in the sense of signal. No signal. They're entangled. Now, this becomes rather— They're not entangled through other bits of the universe. No, no. They're totally independent? Totally independent, yes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They are entangled in the sense that quantum mechanically they started like this. Now, there are ways—I mean, there are trivial things. There's a famous example of the socks. Okay, so you take a trip and you took a pair of socks. Let's assume they are blue socks and so on. And then you open your bag and you—oh, I forgot one sock. So this is my blue sock.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So you know that there is a blue sock at home. So knowing that is a correlation, but that's trivial, right? I mean, you can do that with anything. In quantum mechanics, imagine that you look at a sock, but the sock is changing colors all the time. So now you observe it is red. The other one is red. I observe it is green. The other one is green. Okay, randomly.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So little bits of the universe are entangled.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I asked him to buy me the 12 volumes of Freud's Really? Yeah. And he said, what for? But I was very impressed with it. Of course, I couldn't even understand half of what these books had in them. So I was very interested in many things. And I must say to you that my interest in science, in particular physics, doesn't come from the standard thing that you see here in the United States mostly.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, some people, and a friend of mine who's a Buddhist claims that there is a whole religious or Buddhist way of saying that everything was entangled. Yes, originally, all atoms, all electrons, all elementary particles were entangled. Yes, because the universe started very, very tiny and everything was entangled. Okay, so you could imagine... that the universe is entangled.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So what happens here affects others. But the entanglement gets lost when perturbations and noise appears and so on. So we are not today entangled with, I don't know. I mean, we don't think that we- Some people think that- Yes, yes, yes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

3943.745

People are entangled. Yes, yes, yes. Well, that gets to a maybe- But that's a whole, yeah. That's a whole thing. That's poetry. That's poetry, exactly. There's another example that brings us to a very salient aspect of my childhood, which is chaos theory. Okay. Right. So I'll say it so you don't have to. You're one of the founders of chaos or certain aspects of chaos theory. We'll talk about that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

3969.937

But, you know, for those of us that grew up in the 80s and 90s – I was born in 75 – you know, who saw the movie Jurassic Park. You know, there's a moment in that movie where I think Jeff Goldblum is explaining, you know, what is it, chaos theory, and maybe it was the butterfly flapping its wings in one location and impacting something someplace else.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

3991.193

For the poets in the world, right, that was a very captivating example because I think the human brain can naturally understand that things around us, we can have an impact on them and they can have an impact on us. But the notion that a small insect thousands of kilometers away can impact something that's going on more adjacent to us, it seems outrageous sci-fi.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4021.744

you know, the notion that one thing impacts another and impacts another, that's pretty straightforward, right? There's just a dominoing of the physical world. Chaos theory is different. Yes. Okay. Could you explain chaos? Yes. And I'll just add one more thing just for context for you to, you know, sort of the paints in the palette.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4041.423

Around the same time, I remember the book Chaos coming out and where... There was a lot of excitement around chaos and this was coming up. There was also a lot of discussion about fractals. The idea that when you zoom into things at a very, very small level, you start seeing some regularities. Now we know this about crystal structures, right?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4060.637

Like you could drop a water under a high powered microscope, you see structure there. It's not random. The angles are very consistent, at least around certain nodes, et cetera. So I think people love this idea that we have repeating patterns and numbers in nature, that things at a distance can impact us more closely. Like this is the kind of stuff that the non-physics brain can understand.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4084.857

And it does enchant, right? We sort of poked at poetry. I love poetry. You love poetry. Yeah. I think it enchants because I think humans are naturally interested in how the randomness of life might not be as random as it appears. So what is chaos? Where does it exist in our lives? Not emotional chaos, and what is the relationship between fractals and chaos, if any?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4115.089

Okay, let me say first of all about why chaos is what it is, and it's not quantum, and there is quantum stories, and there's a quantum chaotic field, but I won't go into that. Chaos is a very interesting idea, which is, it flies against our intuitions.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4130.894

Since the times of Newton, we know that if you give me the position and the velocity of the initial particle, I can use Newton's equations of motion to tell you where that particle is going to be anywhere with an incredible precision.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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When we launch a rocket, we want to go to the moon, we can calculate and predict exactly where that rocket is going to be after so many hours, after so many days, and so on. Actually, we use the equations of motion to predict that trajectory, and it's a precise trajectory.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

415.477

Namely, I was not always a kid in math. I was not one of these people that can really do things very, very quickly and so on. But I was interested because I thought that physics was gonna compliment my attempt at understanding how the whole universe is put together. The philosophers were saying all sorts of things. I went to a very special school that I learned six years of Latin and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4157.358

This is how Elon was able to capture the rocket with the chopsticks recently. Something of that sort.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4162.3

Yeah, that's, yeah. Okay, now, the idea of chaos is, so that's, okay, it works. There are some cases where, let's assume, now I'm going to give you a simple example. So I take a ball, I put it on a billiard ball on a billiard table, I send it out, and at the moment I can know exactly the position of velocity, I can tell you exactly where it's going to go.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4186.236

that a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny difference in the initial position or velocity of that ball will take it very, very far from the other one, which is ridiculous. I mean, if I tell you that, you know, two cars start at exactly the same speed in the same position and one of them has a little more, you know, they'll stay parallel to each other.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4205.573

In some systems, and I'll tell you in a second, that actually those two trajectories diverge completely. So it's what we call sensitivity to initial conditions. That's what chaos is all about in classical mechanics. What is really weird about it is that it happens in systems that also undergo friction. Because let me give you an example that I used to teach chaos at Stanford for many years.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So imagine I give you a beaker full of molasses. And you take a very big ball, stainless steel ball, and you just throw it into the thing. Well, after a while, it will just drift with the thing. It goes so slow because, you know, friction slows it down, and it just goes. And now you throw another one from another altitude, and all of them are going to do exactly the same.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Some systems that are chaotic do exactly the opposite. Even though there is friction, everything tends to just slow it down. They just keep going far apart from each other. Amazing. Amazing thing. So that's chaos, okay? And I can tell you a little bit why I got so involved in this and the work we did.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4266.01

Does chaos exist in every physical system? Mostly, yes, yes. Maybe even in neurons or the brain.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4271.733

Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, this is why I don't want to get into a controversy here about issues of whether we live deterministic lives or not. But, you know, if things that are a little bit random and so on, or even just a tiny difference in initial conditions can take you to very different outcomes. But this, we're not talking about many particles. We are talking two. Okay, so that's one.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, fractals is a different story that comes out of a guy who I knew very well, Benoit Mandelbrot, a very, very, very funny character, brilliant too, but very strange, who discovered that certain things are so similar that if you look at the coast of Britain, he used to say that, you look at the coast of Britain and you say, okay, tell me how long is the coast of Britain?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You go with a meter and you measure it. Now, suppose that the meter that you're using now can measure up to an inch. Well, you're going to get a different distance, even though you are adding the same, because there are all these little things in the coast of Britain that are essentially so similar that add a tremendous amount of length. That's what a fractal is all about.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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These are structures that are not just a simple line, but they have all these other things. He thought that it was a whole new geometry. As a matter of fact, and I tell you this because I knew Benoit very well, I met him through a talk I gave on chaos. He used to hang out with chaos physicists. He was a mathematician, brilliant man in many ways.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was having dinner with him in Copenhagen in a restaurant. And the very pretty waitress came to us and so on and served us. And, you know, we were talking. He's a Frenchman. He spoke with a very heavy French accent. And so she says something. What are you doing here? He says, we're at a conference. But I'm not just at a conference. I'm a very special man, he said to her. And she said, how come?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And he says, do you know who Euclid was? And she says, sort of. She said, well, he was a Greek man who invented geometry. I said, oh, well, guess what? I am better than Euclid. I invented a different geometry. He said that? Yeah, he said that. Points to the waitress in Denmark that knew about Euclid. That was very funny. The Danes are smart. Yeah, OK.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4386.338

That was very funny that he would talk about it. So he would give a talk. And he would say, my equations can generate anything. Indeed, he could generate any patterns. So he would say, you want a mountain? Here goes a mountain. You see a mountain, beautiful graphs and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I had to read things like Kant and Cosmogonies and so on that really didn't mean much to me. But suddenly I started discovering that physics might be interesting. And I had a cousin, Hector, who was a physicist, a particle physicist already. I mean, he was living at that time in France. And so there was a little bit of other influence.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4401.744

So self-similarity is a very powerful idea in physics because it allows you that if you know something at a certain scale, you can predict what's going to be at different other scales. And I use that. But chaos and fractals are not always the same. As he used to say, because he didn't like physicists, because we never liked his talks.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We always said, okay, so you're telling us that, you know, things are... He used to say, I'm not interested in pulleys. I'm not interested in things that move things up and down, he used to say. He's thinking about elementary physics class. Something of that sort, yeah. But fractals are very interesting because these are self-similar structures. At all levels, they look the same.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4439.726

You look at them big, you look at small, they have the same type of geometric behavior. Chaos is all about dynamics, how things evolve in time. And the chaotic systems, they tend to diverge from each other for a long, long time. The man who invented the idea of the butterfly effect was a man called Ed Lorenz, who was a very famous meteorologist at MIT.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4462.17

And he was solving the equations of the atmosphere, trying to predict the behavior of the weather. And he noticed, in these very old computers and so on, that sometimes he would get different behaviors. He thought there was something wrong about the computer. And he discovered that the only thing that was wrong was that the initial conditions that he was giving them was very, very tiny different.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And he would get different things. From there, he went into that. And there's a very beautiful... I mean, there are ideas that are very beautiful, like strange attractors and so on. I mean, we don't have to go into that. But so chaos is really a field that essentially explains why things that seem to be simply, you know, explained by classical physics tend to diverge from each other.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4501.797

And they give rise to random outcomes. That's the important thing. You can use chaos... in order to generate random numbers. You can use chaos to generate random patterns. I've done that. And chaos exists at the quantum level and the macro level?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4516.988

Okay, so I was working on something, and I don't think it's interesting how I got into this, because I was doing something else, and suddenly I decided I was going to do this, and I really started going very fast at this. But then I had a very bright student, you met, Ted Hogue, and we decided, let's see if we can see chaos in quantum mechanics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4535.001

And we started doing it, and there were a couple of papers by the Russians actually showing that this was the case. And we discovered that it was not the case. We actually proved that quantum systems are not chaotic. There's some kind of interference between them and so on that makes them recur back and forth periodically.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4551.375

Why do I find that reassuring, that if you get down to a small enough level that you can really predict what's going to happen as opposed to small perturbations leading to big differences in outcome. That was the whole point.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4562.407

We discovered that quantum mechanics, there are waves and interferences and so on that make the system recur, you know. As a matter of fact, I had quite an exchange with Dick Feynman about it, you know. When I met him, I went to give a talk at Caltech, and I was in his office, and he said, so what are you going to talk about? Because I don't want to waste my time. And I said, about chaos.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But my interest was in things that had to do with fairly abstract ideas. I cannot believe that at one point or the other I was very good in geometry class, being able to prove theorems. I mean, the teacher would just say, let's prove this. And I was somehow able to reason through and come to, you know, some proofs.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4582.63

He said, okay. I said, you know, some things are very, in particular in quantum mechanics. So I'm smiling because he was so sharp and so on. So he said, okay, give me the problem. And he said, what is it? I said, well, okay, I give you an electron, and you have it in a potential, and I give you a laser. And he says, is the laser inside or outside the apparatus, just like that? So I said outside.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So you turn on the laser, and I said, so what happens to the electron? And I knew he was going to give me the answer that was already in the literature, but he appeared to be thinking, stood up and walked around and was making all sorts of noises. And then suddenly he says, the energy grows linearly in time. I said, no, it doesn't. How do you know? I said, we measure it. I can show you and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4627.775

And, you know, he was very impressed because that means that there is no chaos, actually. Then he said, oh, you know why I got it wrong? I said, no, because I wasn't thinking in colors, only black and white.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Was he trying to be funny? Of course.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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He was always funny.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4641.877

Let's talk about Feynman and Gell-Mann and Mandelbrot and all the rest as a collection for a moment. You know, one of the great... gifts of my life has been that you would talk about scientists. It really enchants me. I'm like, I'm so delighted when I hear it. Like I grew up hearing the stories about these scientists, right? And not athletes, right? Which is great, but scientists.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And it seems to me that every time you talk about another scientist, you both revere the work they did You see something unique about them. And something I learned very early on, and I've certainly internalized is, and forgive me because I'm assuming here, is that there's a certain aspect of, like... their quirkiness or something about them, like to take them seriously, but not too seriously.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4700.017

Like I never learned to assume that because somebody was a Nobel Prize winner that they were perfect, for instance. Like you would tell me, you know, like Einstein had, you know, he was amazing. Like there's relativity, the patent office, all this stuff. And he like had all these problems with women. Or, you know, and I read the books, right?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Or, you know, or this person, I won't name names because these people are still alive, Silicon Valley, you know, like actually when you and I used to take walks when I was a postdoc, we used to see Jobs walking around, right? No feet, no shoes. He had feet, no shoes. And you would say, you know, I mean, like, he's amazing. Like this guy's brilliant.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4733.781

But then we would chuckle about some of the Jobisms, you know? And so one thing that I learned was that scientists are just people. that these founders, the creators, they're just people. And they often have very challenging areas of their life as well. Like they're not perfect, they're not gods. Some of them have almost godlike access to the universe and understanding it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4758.375

But it seems to me that you hold people up for their contributions, but you never actually, thank goodness, put people on a pedestal to the point where you're like, this person is spectacular in every way. And I'm not saying you cut them down to size, but I learned very, and this has served me well in my life and now public facing,

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Or on Twitter, like if I make a mistake and someone comes at me, it's somebody that I respect. I go, oh, but then I remember like this person has a lot of issues in certain domains of their life. So, you know, to realize that, you know, like we're all human, like this notion of like, like none of us, none of us are gods. Right. And yet there are people like Feynman.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I think that I was very interested in ideas and not necessarily in the very concrete aspects of science at that time.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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like Gell-Mann, like Einstein, who have almost supernatural levels of ability. So what's that about? How do you hold knowledge, insight, and stature in your mind alongside the humanness, the inherent flawed nature of all of us?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

48.018

During today's discussion, we also talk about a life of science, that is, what it is to spend one's life in curiosity, in trying to understand the universe around us and how to understand ourselves. Indeed, today we also talk about neuroscience, how the brain works, and the different sorts of questions that I do believe everybody asks. whether you're a scientist or not.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4818.558

Well, okay, it's complicated. There are many ways to think about it. In some of these names, for instance... These people are built into giants by the media too. I mean, you know, Feynman, I mean, if you go to Quora and so on, everybody's asking, you know, what did Feynman do? What was he wearing? And so on. As if, you know, he was a god. I mean, obviously what he did in physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4842.248

He, and I interrupt myself here because he really worked very hard, very hard, according to Gelman in particular, to creating a myth about himself. He worked very hard. When I met him, I can't even tell you the anecdotes. I only met him for an hour, but he was obviously the kind of man that wanted to leave an impression with you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

486.291

Can I ask you a question about early schooling? So if I remember correctly, you were born naturally left-handed. Yes. They forced you to learn to write with your right hand. Yes. You went to a very strict school. Yes, yes. Like military levels of strictness.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4860.418

R-rated and X-rated anecdotes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4862.019

Exactly. But I remember the good one was that, you know, I was going to give the colloquium and he said, should I come? I said, I think you should come. And then he said, well, then I'm going to give you a piece of advice. Do not look at me because if you look at me during your talk, you're going to get confused and so on, you know? And actually, that's exactly what happened.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4878.213

I started, you know, the colloquium at Caltech, you know, the marine boot camp of science. And there I am starting to talk. And suddenly I said, instead of saying the next hour, I said something like in the next week or something or so, because there he was. And then he started saying, you know, like, look elsewhere, elsewhere, you know, that kind of guy, you know.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4895.157

For anyone who hasn't lectured, there's a tendency sometimes when one is going fast to fill in without thinking. It's just something that one learns. I mean, I've had to learn it the hard way when we missed it in the recording and this kind of thing. It's a humbling moment. But yeah, I think that, well, Feynman would have been canceled by, by the standards of the last few years.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4913.8

I took even my father once to a lecture he was giving in San Francisco. And he was giving a beautiful lecture to, I don't know, get some award for teaching and so on. And suddenly a bunch of women walked into the front of the big room, you know, and they started coming.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4927.774

Because it turns out that in one of his lectures, he said something like, you know, if you do it this way, you're as bad as a woman's driver. As Feynman said. And then all these women were saying things. And then he said, I love women. They're all smart. He was very clever.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4941.747

So he would have lost his job by the standards of recent years.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4945.27

But regardless of that, because I really want to go back to this issue, people like Mary Gell-Mann I mean, to me, he was the most intimidating person I've ever met. I mean, now eventually I got to know him because he liked what I was doing. And as a matter of fact, he and I organized a workshop, an incredibly luxurious place in France, at the estate of Madame Schlumberger, one of the oil people.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4967.894

Actually, it was an incredible meeting that he and I organized. So I got to know him a little bit personally. And all he was complaining at that time is he couldn't get a date. He was a widow and he wanted to, you know, women were intimidated by him too.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4981.238

As I recall, because I remember meeting him when I was a kid and we both shared a love of birds, but he was perhaps one of the world's most obnoxious people. Right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

4988.641

But you impressed him. As a matter of fact, I still, you know, I don't know if you want me to remind you of this because we had two stories there. Your mother and I were taking a hike in Aspen and we saw a bird that looked incredibly complicated and so on. So we looked at the bird. The next day we went to him because he loved birds, as you know. And I said, I saw a most unusual bird.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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He said, describe it. So I did it. And he gave me the name in Latin of the bird. And then he said, that's the most common bird in the Bay Area of California. As a matter of fact, you should see it when you pick up the newspaper next time you're there. And indeed, two weeks later, I went to pick up the New York Times and there was the bird. But... At the same time, I said, Andrew likes birds.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

502.28

Almost, yes, yes. This is a very interesting type of education. They have it in France. It's called the lycée in France. And this is a very special school in Argentina. It was actually founded in the 1500s by the Jesuits. And my father went to that school. And so he wanted me to go there. And my brother went there, too.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5028.086

And he asked you, what is your favorite bird? And you said the rainbow lower keet. Still is. And he said, this kid knows. This kid knows, he said.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5037.214

I know my birds.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5038.515

Huh?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5038.775

I know my birds.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5039.195

No, no, but it's amazing. I never heard, you know, because if you could have said a parrot, he would have not been very interested, okay? So, but he was intimidating, very intimidating. And he was nasty too when he wanted to be. So he enjoyed the power he had. I was a member of the board of the directors of the Aspen Center, so we had to decide what programs we had every summer.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5061.633

And he would come to me and say, whom do you want me to insult today? He had all sorts of very funny names for all sorts of physicists and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5069.718

The downside of people like that in science, because I've known some too, there's a very famous neuroscientist now in his 70s who has a Nobel Prize, who also is... known for generating anecdotes about himself. And in recent years, because of political correctness, wokeism, and so forth, tends to do that less, because they have sort of a trucker's mouth.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Brilliant guy, but this guy known for being outrageous and trying to create tales about themselves. This is something that scientists do. Yeah, right, right. In order to maintain their legacy.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, also to feel good about themselves. By the way, I mean, Gell-Mann, I mean, I work with him. It was incredible, I mean, you know, and the way he would interrupt people and so on. And there are two things I can tell you that are interesting. Once he was announcing some new results. He was working on this whole thing on quarks and other things, and actually it was a string theory.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And he announced a seminar, and everybody goes into the garden, you know, and the seminars are nice. I need to remind the audience perhaps here that the Aspen Center for Music was right next to it, the tent they were rehearsing. So the seminar was supposed to start at 3, and there's Gilman comes with all his notes under his arm. He always had notes, walking, pacing, and nothing happened.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And suddenly, they were rehearsing the Beethoven's 15th symphony, which just says, ta-ta-ta-ta. And then you heard the sound, and then he started. I will now tell you about a new theory of how the universe works. That's the way he spoke.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So what strikes me is that these people take themselves very seriously. Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you think that's important in life?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5166.101

I don't. I like to, I mean, as you know, I like to have a good sense of humor about myself and be self-deprecating. I think some people, you know, have issues and they do that. I mean, it all depends on how you, you know, see things.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

520.429

And in six years of a very strict education, mostly humanistic, I learned Greek and learned Latin. I learned immense amounts of history, which I loved. And there were other courses in French and so on. In French, we had to memorize incredibly long poems that we had to recite.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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In fact, given how amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company earlier this year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. Let me ask you about the... about this.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So further down my list of things I want to talk to you about is that you've always loved, it's clear from a young age, high level concepts, deep concepts, order in the universe, working on hard problems. You just filed another patent. I mean, as long as I've known you, you've been pursuing some new area of knowledge or implementation of knowledge.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And yet you, like your father, I know you delight in everyday things. I mean, since I was a kid, you've taken a walk after dinner. You've biked to work if you can that day because of the weather. You love a really good espresso, a really good meal. The high and the low are checked off boxes for you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5314.086

That's different, I think, than the way most people think about scientists, especially theoreticians. Theorists, excuse me. Which one is it, theoreticians or theorists? Theorists, they say, yeah. Theorists. That we assume the academics that are always somewhere else, like they're up here, they're not grounded, they're not feet on the ground, but you like everyday things. Oh, absolutely.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5338.18

You very much like where we're going to eat dinner tonight is every bit as important as this conversation about relativity.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Absolutely. I think that there is a myth that sometimes gets perpetuated at universities. My first meeting with my advisor when I got to University of Pennsylvania, he said, I want you to know one thing, you're going to live like a monk. I said, what does that mean? No fun, nothing, you're going to work. I want you to work. You're getting paid to do something. I was so scared.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Do you still remember some of them?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And then I told him that on weekends I had to escape to New York City to take a walk on Central Park and look at nice things. You know, I always enjoyed the good things of life. And, you know, at that time, I couldn't afford them. But that doesn't mean that I didn't, you know, enjoy them. And I do believe that I inherited this from my father, a tremendous enjoyment of life in general.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Because sometimes early memories are embedded so deeply.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, I am very physical and tactile about things. I like to surround myself with things that are beautiful. I enjoy, as you said, good meals and the daily things of our life. I'm not just living in some stratosphere and not being able to, you know, enjoy a meal I'm having and so on. No, the opposite. And, yes, in that sense, I am very much like that. And, you know, Mary is the same way.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, yes. And my brother and I sometimes tell each other some of the pieces of these poems.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And so that's why we enjoy that. Your wife. Yeah, my wife, sorry. Yes, we really enjoy, you know, she in particular being Danish, you know, they have this idea of slow eating and enjoying the good things of life. And I'm very much like that. Yes, very much. I don't feel guilty about it. You know, if I can afford something.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Nor should you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Huh? Nor should you. Well, there is a certain aesthetic component to science and the idea that they sell you that, you know, Einstein didn't care about anything. Actually, if you look at the negotiations that Einstein had with the Institute for Advanced Studies for salaries, you'll see that he really cared a lot about these things, too.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, yes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I'll just say something right now to foreshadow what will likely happen several times throughout today's discussion, which is anytime that my father is in the presence of his brother, my uncle, Carlos, they start laughing about jokes that they've been telling over and over back and forth with one another since they were a young kid.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Oh, so our notion of him is just kind of like it was just science and he had no interest in material things. Right, right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes. I had an uncle, actually, Hector's father. You know, there was a branch of the family that was very much into culture. They had beautiful collections of paintings and so on. And once I was, what, 14 or so, and I remember at a party, we had big social parties in my parents' house, and he was lecturing me that I should never care about anything but truth and concepts and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was a little bit scared. Yeah. I wanted to enjoy life as well, okay? So it was a little bit complicated. No, no, I enjoy everything, of course. I think I got out of my father mostly, yes. My mother was a little more ascetic in a way. But yes, the tiny little things of life are what makes one's life, you know? I'm slowly starting to get that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I think I've been a little like rabid about my interests almost to an obsessive level to the point where I've sometimes overlooked like how many opportunities for just like lovely daily interactions I have. I try. but I feel like I've just been chasing the carrot of knowledge. Like I love doing what I do. I've always done that, you know, but.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5519.539

Well, but you have to be careful indeed. I, you know, as you know, I meditate and for many years and so on and being in the present and being able to just, you know, be there and nothing else is the tremendous source of satisfaction and calms me down and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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When did you start that?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, I started actually out of the discovery, I mean, a trivial thing that many people have. I discovered that every time my blood pressure was taken by the doctor, it was just going through the roof. You know, it's called a white coat phenomenon or something of that sort. And I got very, very upset about it because I tried to control it. And it got worse and worse and worse.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And they told me to do one. So I want one or the other. I have a friend, a colleague more than a friend, who's a Buddhist, who started telling me about, have you tried, first of all, biofeedback? I tried for a year. I did biofeedback. And then he started telling me about meditation. So one day, actually, he's a physicist as well. He was visiting me in my lab. And he said, let's do it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I did a session with him on meditation. I couldn't believe it. My hands suddenly were warm and felt incredibly nice. So I decided that I really wanted to learn how to do it. And I started doing it at a time when I truly needed it because I realized that without being aware, I was anxious. Like, for instance, I would see myself walking down the street holding my fists this way.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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That's not a very relaxed way of living, okay? So I really started doing this meditation on a fairly continuous basis, and I really enjoy it. And it's very important, as a father, I say this to anyone, too, that you have to enjoy life. I mean, pursuing these things, you know, eventually, what, you know... The value is in the pursuit, not in achieving them anyhow.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So just the mere mention of his brother will bring a bit of a smile and a chuckle to both of our

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So you might as well pursue many things at the same time. I mean, a good meal eaten properly can be very, very nice too.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I love that about you. It's something I'm working on. I remember when I, along those lines, I remember when I was in graduate school, we published a paper and then we published a second paper in science. And I remember thinking like, this is like such a proud moment, a first author paper in the journal science. And I told you, and you said,

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, enjoy it and just be aware that by tomorrow you'll be worried that you'll never do it again. Exactly.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And fortunately, we published in Nature and a few other journals a bunch of times after that. But you also warned me about the postpartum. of post-excitement, like something great happens. You know, at that time, we, as a field of neuroscience, didn't really understand dopamine dynamics, but now we do.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5682.78

What you were describing is this trough in dopamine that we get a day or two after some big event. Yes. Typically postpartum is associated with the birth of a child, but it could be, you know, getting a degree or a great party or a paper in science or nature, first author paper. And you said... a couple of days from now, you're going to feel low and you just have to wait.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, yes. So I learned a lot of French. And also my parents decided, my mother mostly, that I had to learn French and English. And I went to Allianz Francaise, where for five years I went there. I was essentially the only boy in the class, which was very nice in a way. And in order to graduate, essentially, you know, to be fluent in French.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I'll never forget what you said. You said, just go back to what inspired the first project, pick a different problem. It'll happen again. And the second time it happened, I was like, he was right. It happened again. And again, and again, I know I haven't had an infinite number of those papers in those journals, but I learned about the dopamine dynamics associated with pursuing a goal.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And then you get the thing and you're very excited and then you feel the drop.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, yes. And that I think that is something that even ancient philosophers knew about it. The Buddha, many, you know, the Greeks and so on, this idea that the things we pursue They are ephemeral in a way, in the way the feelings that they elicit in us, you know. And I think that you're right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And there is also another tendency one has to try to avoid, which is you're successful in something and you continue doing exactly the same thing because, you know, by now you know how to do it with your hands tied.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I always felt that I want to go elsewhere. And, you know, I have sort of a reputation for changing feels. And, you know, I don't do that in order for others to be puzzled by it. It's just that I'm curious and I want to have a feeling again that like falling in love, you know, the new thing, you know, is nice at the beginning.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But eventually, whatever you're doing, it becomes, you know, trite and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5778.61

Yeah, let's talk about that because after Chaos, which brought a lot of, you know, I remember we had reporters in our house and there was like a TV and the book by Jim Glick and then you switched to something completely different. Yes, yes. And you got into computer science.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5793.655

Yeah. Well, computer science is a fun— Computers. Computers. What happened was that a lot of the success that we had was because I was at PARC. We had phenomenal computer facilities there, things that we could visualize at a time very few people could do. And so—and one of them, actually, someone suggested I get a patent.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5809.95

There is a patent for the chaos that sometimes people have in T-shirts that actually we discovered for the first time with guys from UC Santa Cruz, with Jim Crutchfield and so on. He was actually very instrumental in getting me into chaos and so on. But what happened was, okay, so we did this, we did quantum. And then one day I said, okay, so what do I do now?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5830.601

Okay, well, you can go and publish one paper after that in chaos. I mean, you can produce 10 PhDs with this. But then I said, why don't I do the opposite? I'm using computers to help me in the physics. Why don't I use the physics to study computers? Well, that's an interesting idea, but you know, I mean, so why don't you do that? So what happened to me

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was at a meeting on chaos in Copenhagen, and I couldn't sleep one night. And I had a book called The Computer-Led Brain by John von Neumann, perhaps someone that was a true genius. I don't know if you've heard of him. He invented computers. He was a phenomenon at all levels, and he was part of the Manhattan Project.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5867.578

He was perhaps one of the most brilliant people who ever existed, at least that we are aware of. I mean, he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies for Neumann. There are all sorts of anecdotes about him. He had a photographic memory. You could give him a page of a phone book. He would look at it, close it, and then he would recite the phone numbers from bottom to top. Totally useless skill.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, but he was a genius, a genius, true genius. He invented computers. He invented game theory in economics. Useful skill. Yeah, exactly. Okay. In any event, so he wrote a very little book called The Computer and the Brain. No equations, nothing. And one night, 4 o'clock in the morning, I cannot sleep. I get down, you know, it was summer, so the sun was still setting.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But in the special school I went to, the discipline was very strict, very strict. You know, we were supposed to do things you don't do in the United States. The moment the teacher walks in, everybody stands up. And if you're late and standing up, you're just kicked out of the classroom and things of that sort.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I went there to read it. And I said, this is what I'm going to do. I don't know anything about brains, but I can imagine, you know, if the brain is like a computer, I could do something like that. But I also want to apply some of what I know to these things. And the first thing that occurred to me was to start looking at the computer network we had at PARC.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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These computers were communicating with each other as we nowadays, we know it as the internet and so on. So there were many, many aspects of this. And I decided that because I was very influenced by one or two students that were very much into economics and libertarian ideas and so on, and one of them had taken two courses in econ at Caltech.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So we decided to start looking at this as a market where computers essentially buy and sell programs to execute and their machines and so on. So we started really doing what we call the ecology of computation. It was a big effort, which married economics with artificial intelligence and computer. But it became a big thing. And so I became, again, it's like falling in love again. It's a new field.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I thought it was great.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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The discovery process of falling in love is half the fun.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Absolutely. Yeah. And I also was able to understand, I mean, there is a lot of formalism in economics and some of it is really, I mean, sort of academic. But there are some ideas that are very profound to the extent that some people consider me an economist sometimes because I think in terms of utility rewards and risk and all this stuff.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And as a matter of fact, a lot of the work I'm doing now in resource allocation in networks comes from ideas from economics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

5994.529

When you go into a new field, in order to learn about the field, is that mainly through talking to people in the field, reading books? Both, both. And it doesn't strike me that you have ever tried to ingratiate yourself into any field. It's not like you're trying to be a member of the field. Like you go in as an observer and a learner.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yes, I need to say this. I don't think that many people have said if I stayed in one field, I would have done much better in terms of reputation and so on. As a matter of fact, I can tell you an anecdote that is... You mean like awards and stuff? Yeah, like for instance, not long ago, I was already doing computers after chaos and so on.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I won't name the person, but a very good physicist professor at Berkeley came into my office and said, Bernardo, we have an issue here. I said, what is it? that your name for membership in the National Academy of Science is coming up. I said, oh, that's nice. He said, well, there's a problem. You're not writing papers in physics. You're writing papers in computer science.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But it was a lovely experience in many ways when I reflect on it because it gave me a humanistic education that has been incredibly useful in my career. Most people don't realize that. I mean, I tend to think of things in a very broad context and it's because of the education I had. Okay. So, and I loved history of Rome and I'd learned to recite things in Latin.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And, you know, we need a physicist because otherwise the chemists will get that job. The physicists don't. Yeah, welcome to academia. Yeah. So I said, well, you want me to do? He said, well, can you perhaps write one or two more papers on this so we can show? I said, no, I cannot do that. I can't.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, isn't there a famous story about Feynman and being elected to the National Academy? He refused to. Yes. Right. I think they told him he was in the National Academy. And then he said, well, what do I do? And they said, well, you elect in other members. And he said, I quit.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6084.035

Well, yeah. So in any event, I never became a member of the National Academy. But you never sought prizes. No, I mean, I would have liked to get them, why not? I mean, you know, I'm not, it's not that I said they are meaningless, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I, since I was not, as you said, I was always a little bit of a, always moving on to the next thing, never staying long enough, going to these meetings where by now you heard it all, you know, over and over and over again. So, yeah.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, I mean, I have to say that, you know, like, I mean, as you know, I still have my position at Stanford and teach, I'm involved in a little bit of research. But one of the great advantages I had is that all my advisors died or killed themselves. So I was orphaned in science. And so there was never an expectation from my advisors that I do the next thing because they were dead.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I thought about that. But I remember when I launched the podcast or started going on podcasts, I remember you being a little bit concerned. You're like, what are your colleagues gonna think?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I think at that point, the way that science was going and the structure of academia relative to what my needs in life were, and just a passion to wanting to do something new, I put a lot of thought to the fact that you've changed fields many times. And I just felt absolutely compelled to get into science communication. And there was no stopping that. But I have to thank you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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A lot of the reason I was able to take the step to do the podcast, in addition to being supported by Lex Friedman's suggestions and a lot of help from others, Joe Rogan and others, but is that, I was like, well, that's what you're supposed to do. When you hit a point where what you're doing isn't as compelling, you wait for the thing that draws you forward.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Seems like you were always drawn forward. I was thinking of carrot and stick. It's not like you disliked where you were. It's that there was some carrot that you identified and you go towards the carrots.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6198.55

And also something very, the other day, my wife was actually mentioning. I've been, in a sense, an orphan. I never had mentors. It's very interesting. Except this, frankly, not terrific graduate advisor. He was not my mentor, really. I mean, you know, he didn't even want me to do the things that I wanted to do.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So I never had someone who was whispering, Bernardo is the guy to you should be considering for this or that. I mean, I had the fortune to really get to the top of many of these fields and I'm interacting with the top people. I mean, we talk about Feynman, there are many very famous people that I respect immensely that I met When I was in France, you know, as you know, I was teaching there.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I met people that are brilliant and so on. I felt treated with tremendous amount of respect as a colleague and so on. But I never had mentors in that sense. And also, as I said, I am a little bit restless. I am very curious about everything. And so, you know, sometimes I see something and I say, oh, there's an opportunity to do something interesting.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I think that the issue of being curious is extremely important. And it's interesting because I reflect a lot on, say, my father. My father was an immensely curious person, but all about details. He never liked abstractions of any kind. He was very proud that he went to the same school I went, and the only course he flagged was philosophy. because he said it doesn't make any sense.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And so it was very, very, I enjoyed that very, very much. My brother didn't actually, and so. Well, you two are very different.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6276.221

Now, perhaps he was right about that. You know, sometimes you wonder about what these philosophers talk about. A couple of months ago in Denmark, we were invited, my wife and I, to a dinner with philosophers talking about artificial intelligence. I thought that these people were, they didn't really know what was going on. But nevertheless, Yes, I am curious and sometimes I move on to things.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I feel that the reward, the internal reward you get from doing something new and interesting and exciting is much better than a recognition that someone will come and say, you know, whatever. I mean, don't misunderstand me. I will not say no to a recognition. But it's not really that I do this in order to get that. That's not me at all.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6319.613

Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is sort of, It brings my thinking back to the early discussions about other students are not interested in physics, you're interested in physics. Other people are smoking a lot of weed and partying. No, like you said, you've not had mentors. That's one area in which you and I have been very different. I've always attached myself to mentors, many of them, many of them.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

633.219

I have great, great adoration for Carlos, but you two are very different. And along those lines, I was just about to ask or mention, and some of our Argentine and South American listeners generally, and perhaps even European listeners, might be shocked and perhaps disappointed to learn that you're one of the few Argentines that I know who doesn't care much for the game of football, soccer.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6343.625

Well, there might be a psychological reason too. Yeah. Yeah. that you need this, or needed at one point or another, these parental type figures. I said, yeah, there might be. I wish I had them. Don't misunderstand me. As a matter of fact, I mean, my influence on my students, I produce more than 15 PhDs. It's also strange because none of them stayed in physics.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, the department at Stanford was not too happy with that. It's not that I told them not to, but they all smelled that, you know, I was doing something else. I mean, you know, from computers, I became very aware of what was going on very early on with the Internet. As you know, I started doing all this stuff on social long before anyone was doing it, economics of attention and all that stuff.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And many of the students the other day, I found one of them. I met one, Lada Damich, who, you know, I think you— This is early at Google. No, she went to Facebook. And the other day she wrote me a note. I was so lucky that I met you. She was going to do a thesis on I don't know what, solar, collecting solar.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6397.439

Yeah, you've collected some pretty interesting students. We won't name names other than Lars, but some of them are very well-known people in the tech industry now. Oh, yeah. And I think that it seemed like the people that would gravitate towards you. It's interesting, your laboratory is off campus. So anyone that decides to be off campus is already making a choice.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6416.832

They don't want to be part of the standard culture. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let me I want to get back to this issue of like Internet and Silicon Valley. I recall it was the early 90s. So it'd be like 89, 90, 91. Remember, I had this this girlfriend, Gretchen, remember, and her dad was the editor of Guitar Player magazine.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I'll never forget, he told me, he said, you know, it's going to be all about multimedia. Remember that? No one talks about multimedia. He said, your television is going to be, your computer is going to be, your stereo is going. I mean, he was right, right? He was basically, everything was going to be synthesized into common devices. And we now know that that borne out to be true.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But at what point... did you decide that things like computers were mainly going to be a route to industry and not to academia? This is really important, I think, for people to understand because Right now, it's kind of happening in biomedical sciences. But you see this at Stanford.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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People get degrees in computer science, but not to become computer science professors sometimes, but really so that they can go into industry. So how do you see nowadays, like for people that are interested in science or technology, do they need to go to graduate school? Like is a PhD useful anymore?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Peter Thiel says that you shouldn't even get a bachelor's. I think that's what he, you know.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, I have great respect for Peter. Great respect for Peter. There are a lot of things that are easier to say when you're already a billionaire. No, no, no. I know.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Like Steve Jobs saying, you know, passion is everything.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right. I mean, necessary but not sufficient. Right, right, right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6511.802

Necessary but not sufficient. So I think that what's happening today, I mean, technology, we are going through a technological revolution. There's no doubt about it. We used to learn about the printing press, and now it's the same thing with computers. I still remember, and I, you know... This is amazing because, you know, today is so obvious.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6528.954

I mean, people didn't know much what was going on, apart from everything. One night we were having for dinner, I remember, you know, Emmanuel Mignot, who was, you know.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6536.52

They discovered the orexin-hypercretin relationship. That's the cause of narcolepsy is a mutation.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, he was a friend of ours and his wife. They were at home at our dinner, and I was telling them. I was telling them that you could go to a computer and go through the – Louvre Museum in Paris. And they say, what are you talking about? And so we finished dinner and we all drove to park at night.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I turn on my computer and there was a man, I still remember his name, something Pioch was the last name. He had gone taking pictures of every painting at the Louvre and put them online so you could just navigate Through the Louvre. Today is obvious, trivial. At that time, they couldn't believe it. There you are in Palo Alto on an evening going through all the rooms of the Louvre.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They just couldn't understand what was going on. What year was this? I don't remember.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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It doesn't seem to concern you much at all. No, no.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Must have been like 94? When the web started coming, you know, that was right before. We all had to get email in college in the final year of 97. So it must have been somewhere around like 94, 95. Something of that sort.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right before, right at the time Andreessen made the web available to everybody, basically, you know, Netscape. You know, so in any event, so it was an amazing thing. It was amazing. Now, all these developments were really done in companies, not necessarily in academia. Okay, that is an interesting point.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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The reasons for that are sort of interesting, I think. I've reflected on that because my own wife likes to watch soccer. I mean, she's Danish. She likes the European tournaments. I never liked mob behavior. I never liked this whole passionate involvement in these things. I don't know why.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And I think that today, an immense amount of the advances that we see in biotechnology, in computers, in everything are essentially done I would say for profit by companies. I think social networks, we started doing social networks at a time when no one even thought of doing it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I used to say I do social science with a capitalist because sociologists used to study the behavior of five widows in some Norwegian village and write a paper. We could look at 150,000 people. How did they visit this site or that site and predict how we were able to predict behaviors. So I think that today everybody knows that that's the case and the same thing with artificial intelligence.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But for a kid in high school or kids in college or kids in, I mean, is it worth getting a graduate education? Well, it all depends on what you want to do. I mean, law, medicine, you need the professional degree. I mean, these are ultimately professional degrees, so you need the training. I don't want a surgeon that didn't go to medical school.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Okay, but the danger is, and I remember a very, very bright guy I had in my team, you don't want to become a blue-collar worker. See, what I'm saying is the following. Being a hacker or being able to deal with software, it was an incredibly profitable profession. Now you have these large language models that can actually program for you. You need to write a program.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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You go to ChatGDP and he'll write it for you. So suddenly, you know, if you don't have a set of talents, a way of imagining things, of doing something, you become basically just someone that just hacks for so many dollars an hour. Now, it's true that they can give you options. If the company does well, you get rich and so on. But I still believe that you need some contextual cultural part to this.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Questions like, where do we come from? Is there a God? What is our use or purpose in the universe? And how is it that we can ponder these super high level abstract questions about how we got here and what our purpose is and how things work at the quantum level, tiny, tiny bits of things that we can't even see. And at the same time to lead an everyday life that is meaningful and joyful.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, I personally believe that humanities and all sorts of other things are very important, and to understand where is your cultural environment, where are you coming from, and where is this society going is important. But on the other hand, as you said, you can just finish high school and start hacking and become very good at it, and it doesn't require much more than that.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Do you think the examples of like Zuck, Elon, and others, you know, going from, you know, essentially departing standard education to start companies? Do you think they've served, I mean, certainly not talking about the companies, but do you think those examples are good examples for people to internalize or are they just, are they unicorns?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Well, I think that they are unicorns and you have to be very careful. We only talk about the success stories. We don't go and interview the guy that is loading a landscaping truck because his startup didn't go anywhere. Okay. So it is a very, our tendency to see these people as heroes and to try to imitate them is a very dangerous one, I think.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Now, that doesn't mean that you should not be working on the things you care and gamble. But these are the guys who played a lottery and won. Do you remember there were many other social websites before, you know, Facebook? And they all died. And Facebook could have died too. I mean, Zuckerberg might disagree with me, but, you know, it could have died. Okay.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I was never, you know, able to understand it to the point that I never went to a soccer game till the week before I left for the United States. My brother insisted that I had to go to a soccer game. And this is sort of embarrassing, but at one point or the other, it's someone, you know, there was a good goal. And so I stood up and said, this is great.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And, you know, all these things are like that. Apple, when almost under, they brought Steve Jobs again, and the guy put them onto, you know, onto the stratosphere. And the same thing with Elon Musk. He's a high-risk taker. And so far, every time he flips the coin, he comes the right way. But to say, I want to be like him, you have to be very careful and to calculate the odds, okay?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So when you say this, how many of these kids really make it? I mean, it's a very complicated thing. So I think that to have a strong background in something will help you when suddenly the field switches from being a programmer and making a lot of money to suddenly programming a dime a dozen or becoming a technician, basically.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I mean, I had a perfectly thriving career as a lab scientist with grants and private funding and a bunch of other things, publishing regularly. And when I decided to switch to this, were you worried?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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No, because I saw it as a very slow departure from what you were doing. And I saw the success very early on. I mean, I realized that you were essentially satisfying two things that are very important to you. You like to explain things. You're incredibly good at explaining things since you were a little kid. okay, you were always explaining everything to people and you have a talent.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Let's face it. I mean, you know, I'm not saying this because I want to flatter you. I really believe that. Everybody says that. The success of your podcast is a success at explaining things in ways that people understand. They don't have to go and buy a book on neuroanatomy to understand what you're saying. So I knew that this was a path. Now, I didn't realize how incredible the path was.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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And there was a lot of randomness in it. For instance, you started podcasting at a time when very few people were podcasting. If you start today... the story would be a very different one.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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The timing was the pandemic. People were home.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They were listening to podcasts. And this brings something to me that many times people have asked me about me. What makes me do what I do? I believe in the idea of walking on beaches with very few footprints. When you go into a crowded field, it's a mess.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6926.617

So many of the times that I move into something else is when I realize that there's a mob scene of scientists working at this and the chances of doing something interesting... are very, very small, okay? The internet has allowed information to go everywhere. A guy in Zambia can actually read the same things that I read here. So it's very hard to compete against such a crowd.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6946.614

And many people are brilliant and many of them are smart. So you started something very early on, and you were lucky that you chose a field that resonates with the needs of people. There are also other people who do podcasting and it goes nowhere. So I think that I never worried. I actually was elated to see the trajectory of your podcast.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6968.514

And the only thing is you have a tenure position, and that is a nice safety cushion if everything else were. Today, you're beyond the reach of justice, as I say. So no problem. You don't need it, in a sense, unless you need it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

698.722

And I turned out I was on the wrong side of the audience, of the audience. People got very almost violent with me, you know. So, yeah, soccer to me is something that I watch, but I'm not passionate about. Right. Yeah, I never really felt that it was that interesting. Although, you know, I was in a rowing team. I learned boxing. I did a lot of sports.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6983.966

No one's beyond the reach. of justice. But yeah, I still maintain my tenured position. I spoke to my chairman in ophthalmology this morning and I'll teach this spring or in the fall.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

6991.41

And it's good for you too, to really interact with young people and to hear what they care and so on. But I never worried in the sense that I thought that you have enough talent to do well and you chose to do it. I mean, I remember during COVID at the beginning, we were at your sister's house and you were drawing all these little diagrams.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I used to put my drawings.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7010.259

Yeah, yeah. And so I think you put them on Twitter or something of that sort. And it was the beginning of something much more interesting and important. And so I never worried about it. I think that all of us, the whole family and those who know you are sort of impressed at the explosive success of this story here. You know, your podcast is amazing. I mean, I don't have to tell you.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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That's what reflects a kind of an early compulsion more than anything of... Learn and teach. Learn and share.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7036.622

Yeah, but there's also, I need to say something. The other day, actually, we were watching your interview with Esther Perel. And regardless of the fact that I think it's a great interview, both my wife and I were reflecting on the fact that it's also an incredible tribute to the way you conduct an interview. Okay, so there is a talent there.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7055.103

I mean, not many people can take someone and talk for, and make it interesting, let's put it that way. So you have that. I inherited your curiosity. No, but it's more than that. It's also a way of drawing people out and so on, which is also part of your practice. So I never had any doubts. They are the opposite. I mean, the issue is, you know, obviously you're taking it to many, many places.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7076.324

long beyond what you started, which was essentially explain to people how neuroscience works, right?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7082.227

Yeah, we've gone into a lot of health domains and other things. And I'm also been blessed with an amazing team. This is something that I think while we share a lot of things in common, if I may, I mean, I've always been kind of a pack animal. If it was skateboarding, like draw friends together.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7100.036

If it's birds, I have my bird club with Eddie Chang, who now, as you know, is chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. It's kind of wild to think about. But yeah, I've rarely gone alone. Like I'm just struck. I mean, we've had many conversations over the years, but I'm just struck at how you've been able to be, you've been a bit of a lone wolf with these different camps.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7119.968

You make friends, you have colleagues, you maintain long-term relationships.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7122.91

I have groups of people who collaborate with me. I don't do this alone. Right.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7125.692

Right, right. But I haven't changed crowds very often. And it seems like you've had to go into economics and theoretical physics and all these things. And yeah, that's an interesting difference.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7140.078

And it's daunting and thrilling at the same time. Sometimes when you start giving talks in a field that you've never done much before and you see this audience, it can be intimidating too. Even when I started doing Chaos, I thought I was doing very well until I gave a talk at Berkeley and there was a mathematician. I regard mathematicians as the top, top people in the world.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7160.989

And I was saying something and a guy, he's a very famous mathematician, he said, that's a lie. I said, what do you mean? He said, can you prove it? No, because, you know, physicists don't prove theorems. He said, well, then it's a lie. You cannot prove it's a lie.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7174.598

It was quite a, you know, a cold shower. That happens to me on Twitter every now and again. Well, they'll find something where I misspoke and they do it and it's super embarrassing. You correct yourself, you move on. No, no, and then you learn things too. You have it coming. And you never forget those things. This is what I learned. Like you never forget the errors you made.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

719.534

But I don't like that much of spectator sports like tennis. I played tennis since I was a teenager.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Like on a qualifying exam, most people will never take a qualifying exam, but they basically ask you questions until you get something wrong. The moment you say, I don't know, or you get something wrong, that's an important moment because it's also the thing that you go look up and you never forget.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7203.736

Yeah, right. And also the tiny humiliations can be very good too for you. I mean, this is very important. I've had 20 of those.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7209.159

I've had 20 of those. I did too.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7210.88

I mean, I think it's a very, very important part of growing up and discovering that you don't understand something. But I always need to say this. I mean, in spite of the fact that you paint me as a lone wolf, I'm not. I'm very social, and I love interacting with people. And I've always been very lucky that I surround myself with groups of people, including today,

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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that are brilliant and resonate with the kinds of things I want to do. And so it's very stimulating. I'm not the kind of person that sits in a corner and does theories and publish it. I publish papers on my own. That was my romantic period where I needed to be Einstein in the patent office. And not that I thought I was Einstein, but it was very important. I was the only author.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

725.558

I'm not a spectator sport fan either. The other day, someone asked me what my favorite sports team is. You'll like this. And I said the Harlem Globetrotters because they're undefeated. They have the best record. And that was actually the one professional sports team game you took me to when I was a kid. We'd always go see the Globetrotters. They're undefeated. Yes, unbelievable, yes, yes.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7252.53

Today, I don't mind putting my name, whatever, and I don't need it. I mean, I have hundreds of papers and lots, more than enough patents and so on. So I like interacting with people. It's very, very important to me. When I have an idea, I need to tell people about an idea. So I can relate. Yes, yes, yes. So that's very good.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7271.582

And I still see some of my old students and collaborators like, you know, Tad and so on. And we take walks every once in a while and discuss things, you know. And so I learn a lot from him too.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7281.387

Right now you're working, as I understand, on quantum internet. Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7286.923

is a mysterious term to most everybody yes yes um you alluded to it earlier about quantum entanglement what about entanglement yes but my understanding is that foreign governments countries and um and our our government and country are very interested in quantum internet yes that it might actually be at least as important as ai maybe more important for security reasons etc

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7314.005

Can you explain quantum internet in a way that I can understand and the listeners can understand? Yes, I can explain.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7318.168

I mean, I'll tell you the original thing. Quantum mechanics was essentially finished in 1925, so we are not reinventing new physics here. Okay, there's the physics of the gravitation and quantum, but that's not really what we are talking about. What happens is the following. The basis of all secure interactions in the internet on computers

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7337.139

are based on the idea that there are certain mathematical equations or functions that are very hard to resolve.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7344.761

So when I send you something encoded, if someone is listening to that conversation that is encoded and tries to read it, it's very, very hard to do because in order to decode that code, it's some kind of symbols and so on, you need to, I don't know, months or years of a computer to do it, okay? but it can be done.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7364.508

Computer codes get broken all the time because the basis of these codes are mathematical functions. You have a mathematical function, you can create a computer program that will try to unravel it and it can be unraveled. Okay, so that's one thing. Now here comes quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics provides security that is not given by mathematics, but by the laws of physics.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7389.429

So if you have a way of sending messages from one computer to the other, encrypted using quantum mechanisms, They cannot be broken. Can you give me an example of a quantum mechanism for encoding information? Imagine that I'm sending you messages. Every message is encoded in binary, ones and zeros. So I'm sending a message which is a string of ones and zeros.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7413.28

That string of ones and zeros could be, hello, Andrew, or it could also be something that is secretly encoded into something. If it's classical encryption, which is what we use today, a computer in principle can look at those symbols and unravel them. Now, let me show you how it works in quantum.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7430.711

In quantum, when I send you a quantum message, the act of touching it, trying to look at it, destroys it. That's what happens in quantum, not in classical thing. I can look at strings of ones and zeros, and I look at them, and I can make a copy of it, and then I read them, I take them to my lab, and I decrypt them. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

744.839

My father took me to see them too. They're fantastic, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. So your father was not a scientist. No. Your brother's not a scientist. And you were feted, according to them, to join the family business. But then you had a teacher. who exposed you to physics?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7450.715

If I look at a string of qubits, quantum bits moving, they are not ones and zeros. They are different things. These are moving parts? They are moving parts. They are usually photons. They go on, you can use fiber optics. You can use- So these are like, I know what photons are.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7463.301

Yeah, photons.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7463.561

So they're little bouncing energy of light. Yeah, little bunches of light because photons. If they're going around- There are also, you know, the photon could be polarized up or down or whatever, but if it's in a quantum state, which is in the intermediate between, the moment I look at it, the moment I capture it, I collapse it into one or the other and I destroy it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7482.05

The interaction with it changes it. The measurement destroys it. This is the mystery of quantum mechanics, that the measurement collapses, we call it the word collapses, into one state or the other. Before that, it was anything. We could be anything. So when I use quantum signals, I'm sending qubits, quantum bits that are called qubits.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7502.541

The act of observing the qubit renders into a classical one or zero. So then there's no way you cannot break it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7510.827

So does that mean that the practical implementation of this equates to... Unbreakable code. Unbreakable code. Exactly. Which is why, of course, other governments. I mean, what I've been told is that in China, they're working very hard on this. Oh, absolutely. And that here, we're working very hard on this. We are working. I'm working too. And you're working very hard on this.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7532.29

But wait, wait. But who's there? Has anyone gotten there yet? Okay. The problem is the following. In order to decrypt Remember that I told you that you can use mathematics, okay? Some of these functions are incredibly complex. It might take the age of the universe perhaps to decode them mathematically. Let's not talk about quantum.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7550.06

But if you have a quantum computer, now we're talking about a quantum computer, it can do it in a couple of hours. A quantum computer could decode any mathematical function of the ones that are used in encryption in hours. Whereas you would take the age of the universe for a monster computer, standard computer you can buy,

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7567.353

to do it. So in theory, whoever gets this ability first can read essentially all the information that's being sent around the world.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7574.877

Not only that, and many people are doing, the Chinese, the Koreans, and we're doing, they are grabbing everything now that is encrypted. They cannot decrypt it and they store it because someday they'll be able to decrypt it. But who knows if it will still be relevant? Oh, but it may be. And we don't know what they have. Imagine if you can get...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7594.348

Remember when North Korea hacked, what was it, Disney? And then they discovered all these emails where people like George Clooney, I don't know who, they was complaining about this or that. So imagine- And worse.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7607.335

And worse. We just didn't hear about that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7608.916

Yeah, yeah, okay. So if you grab all this information, we cannot decrypt it today, but if quantum computers become available and there are people working on quantum computing, they'll be able to decrypt it. In the meantime, People are working on deploying these quantum networks. We're working on that too. Not to deploy them, but just to see whether or not it's feasible to do that, okay?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

761.034

To physics and to the notion of being authentic in what you want. There were two parts to it. He was a very interesting and tormented man, I felt. But it was very interesting. He would come into the class, most of the students, you know, really didn't care about what he was saying and so on. I was fascinated, not only by what he was saying, but his whole personality.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7628.787

The Chinese are ahead of almost everybody. They have two satellites already in orbit that are sending these qubits. So these are impossible to decrypt, okay? Wait, so they're sending the qubit.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7639.095

So you can already communicate in quantum.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7641.016

Oh, yeah, yeah. We communicate all the time.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7642.557

Yeah, yeah. I have a lab in Colorado that does that. Yeah, absolutely.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7645.439

Over 100 kilometers. But that's not what standard internet is. No, no, no, no. But eventually we will have a quantum internet based on all this. Because in order to talk to these quantum computers, you have to send qubits, not just normal bits.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7657.608

So this is a race.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7659.096

Yeah, it raised. We are not really, I mean, since we are not a, yeah, yeah. And there are a lot of people, I need to tell you that a lot of people, including this government, that claim that this is not really that relevant or important. But in Europe, for instance, they're really putting a lot of money into that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7674.302

Why would our government not think it's important?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7676.283

Because there is a sociological phenomenon here. Cryptography has always been the promise of the mathematicians because there are mathematical functions, you know, like discrete logarithms and so on. They believe the moment they heard about quantum computers, they said, oh, we can solve the problem. We can create algorithms, mathematical algorithms that are going to be even harder to break.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7698.068

They call that post-quantum. But they don't know it's true. The United States government is following this post-quantum because they think it's easier and so on. Already they published two of these very, very fancy algorithms. Two students with a laptop were able to decrypt it within a week. So obviously you cannot prove that no one will ever decrypt these things.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7718.857

So the cryptographers, they don't like physics. They don't work as physicists. So they say quantum key distribution, that's the name of this thing, It's esoteric. It's not important and so on. And also, it won't work. Well, they say it's going to work for short distances, about 10 to 20 kilometers.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7736.459

We just published a paper that got tremendous publicity and an award and so on as best paper that we were able to send this stuff over 100 kilometers, okay? So, I mean, and the Chinese are sending that from satellites, okay? So, impossible to decrypt. Military communications based on these kind of things are impossible to decrypt. So, they are very important. But there is a whole...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7757.654

group of people that are saying, no, post-quantum is what we want. And so NIST, the National Institute of, I think, Science and Technology, they are really pushing the post-quantum thing. In Europe, it's the opposite. They're really embracing quantum. I mean, Denmark, for instance, is very far ahead into these things. NATO just gave them a pile of money to work on quantum and so on. So

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7780.35

It all depends. It's a complicated thing because the crypto people are all mathematical people, so they don't care about quantum.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7788.659

Is any of this going to be useful for trying to understand, I don't know, how the brain works? Well... Or is it... I mean, you know, there's still debate as to whether or not the way that we're thinking about brain function is even, like, the right way. We think about neurons, action potentials, and chemicals, and... But the physicists, whenever they, like, poke their noses into this stuff...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

780.533

But I need to say something here that is important. I also was rather irresponsible. You see, I grew up in a family, a well-to-do family, that I never thought I was going to make a living. So it was easy to be interested in science or anything because, you know, it's what you do. You know, you're interested in culture, you read books, you do things.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7811.567

they tend to think about it a little bit differently or they start to think about, well, you know, state dependence, like the brain that you have at 8 a.m. is very different than the brain you have at 2 a.m. or 4 in the afternoon. Like maybe everything's happening differently and maybe some of this actually gets down to the quantum level. Like we can't say...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7827.723

this neuron talks to this neuron, and when they talk in the following way, you get a certain output. Like, is there relevance here?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7834.652

Okay, there are two things I want to say. Beware of physicists getting into brains, in brain work. I mean, they always end up- It's like the new thing now.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7841.862

I know, I know.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7842.683

Neuroscience swung the doors open. He was into neuroscience for a while.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7846.065

I think recently neuroscience has made a good move of including people from psychology, computation, even philosophy, economics, and biology, basically all levels of analysis.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7858.548

The other thing you asked about quantum and the brain, there is Roger Penrose, who just got the Nobel Prize in physics. He's one of the few people who have very esoteric ideas about the brain being totally quantum. He's an incredibly brilliant man. He was the advisor of Hawking.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7873.152

I heard him on Lex's podcast. Yes, yeah. And yeah, he does have interesting ideas about how neurons might be communicating maybe as bound networks as opposed to independent entities.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7884.921

But no one really follows it, and I'm not an expert in that. So Rachel Penrose is the one that's pushing this. Many of the physicists who go into brain science are not very clever at doing brain science because, you know, I heard a story, I think it was Francis Crick or someone who told me, I was at a conference and he was saying this, that a physicist came to him and said,

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7907.364

I decided to go into brain science. And so he said, okay, what have you done? And the guy says, I measure the specific heat of the brain. What do I do with it?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7914.612

Well, I think it's good that computationally minded people have joined neuroscience because it was getting too modal, too descriptive. That said, I do think that, you know, math... is so important, but it's often used to intimidate biologists into thinking that their ideas either might not be true or that there's better ideas out there.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7934.161

I will say that when computational neuroscience first started, it seemed like the attempts to model the brain were pretty feeble. And actually, I'll just say it, they were pretty lame. But now, I think with AI and LLMs, the biologists have had to step back and say, hey, you know, these math, physics, engineering AI types, they have the potential to really evolve the field.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7960.468

At least that's my stance.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7961.428

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7961.768

I was at conferences where people say things like, the brain is a massively parallel machine. And I say, wait, wait, are you sure of that? That's a meaningless exercise. Yeah. So I said, if I show you a row of trees and I said, tell me how many are they? Do you really take the whole thing and you say 75? Or you have to go sequentially? It's not parallel, it's sequential.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7979.914

But LLMs are pretty interesting, right? I'm working on them. You can take four or five large language models, essentially sort of pseudo brains and have them work on the same problem. It's hard to work with five people in parallel in a way that's coherent, right? You can only talk so much over one another.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

7995.881

It's very interesting. That's exactly what we're doing now. Years ago with Jeff Frager, we wrote a paper on the idea of showing how programs collaborating with each other could solve problems very, very fast that human others cannot do. And it's a basis of a lot of the work we want to do now. Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8011.85

And there are people who are already thinking of putting many, many of these LLMs together and then see whether or not they do better than a single one or better than a human.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8019.741

So you think AI is going to improve life for the typical citizen?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

802.776

But my father used to say, what are you going to do once you graduate? You don't want to start teaching in elementary schools or something of that sort. My brother used to say, if he does physics, I'll have to support him because he still says that. So scientists were considered poor. Yeah, they couldn't get a job. I mean, science in Argentina. Argentina has a big tradition in medical sciences.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8025.362

Yes, because you can use these things in order to do things that were very hard to do before. I mean, I use them, and it's amazing. We just published a paper on hallucinations in LLMs and so on, because they hallucinate. Everyone says, oh, they say anything. But yes, yeah, they are very useful, very useful.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8041.167

And I think that the companies that use them will make more money than the companies that produce them, like OpenAI and so on. Yes, yeah, it's a very, very important field.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8050.37

But 10, 15 years ago, whenever I'd bring up AI, you would chuckle and say this stuff is like...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8055.031

Well, the funny thing is that the other day, well, I don't want to name him, one of the managers at Xerox PARC. When I was at PARC, I started playing with the idea of using machine learning to see what they can do. And the AI people at that time said, that's nonsense. We need to think about logic. How does the brain think? How do we do cognitive psychology? We were just doing neural nets.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8076.171

That's exactly it. And the other day I was meeting with some of these people and they were saying to me, we used to laugh at you, you know, doing this stuff because we could do only very little. And today is the rage. Now the difference between what I was doing and what is being done today is a scale.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8090.823

I mean, you know, I don't know if you know that they are now using nuclear power reactors in order to power the data centers. I didn't know that. But it's an immense cost of computing. You have no idea the amount of work it takes to one trillion tokens in order to get one of these things to work.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8106.949

it strikes me you've always been very open-minded and very willing to adopt new technologies. But it hasn't changed your daily life very much. Like not much at all. I remember early on you said, you showed me the internet And you said, be very careful. And I said, why? You said, it's like mental chewing gum. You chew and chew. Those were your words. You said, you chew and chew.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8129.542

And at first, it tastes good. Then it doesn't taste very good at all. Then you don't taste it at all. And then you realize there's no nutrition. And I always think about that in terms of phone usage or web foraging behavior. And you still bike to work. You take a walk in the afternoon or after eating. You...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8151.289

You know, you've always been incredibly regular with your routine despite the evolution of all these technologies. Like, you're not the guy in Silicon Valley who's, like, tricked out with all the gear. No, no, no. Well, there is another— Actually, I've never seen you at a cafe with a laptop.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8165.393

Well, sometimes. But, well, there's another aspect to this. As you know, in the last— Up to five years ago, I spent four years working on the economics of attention and why is it that people attend to things. And I really believe, and I'm not an expert, that there is a tremendous resonance between these machines and our human brains, and they are addictive.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8183.877

The former CEO of Hewlett Packard, where I was directing the labs, Meg Wickman, she used to say, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night to look at my phone. And I know people who do that, and there are members of my family who do that more often that I would like to see them do that. You don't do that. No. I mean, I do it, but I don't have this compulsion to see what's going on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8204.863

I had a student that he said, I love spam because at least something is happening.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8209.826

He said that. Spam? Spam. He said, I get spam and I look at it because something's happening, he used to say. He's now a very successful financial guy. Stop doing stuff. Brilliant fellow. Brilliant fellow. But that's because maybe your internal world is rich enough that you don't... No, but I look at news. I like to look at things. I look at videos. Don't misunderstand me.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

821.772

I think two or three Nobel Prizes and so on. But in physics, they produce some very good physicists. One of them lives in the United States. I mean, he's very, very famous, Maldacena. I haven't met him, but I know he's one of the top people in the field. But I just got into this because I was interested. It sounded, you know, fascinating and abstract, and the ideas were so powerful.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8230.18

It's not that I ignore it. But yeah, I'm not... I mean... I mean, I like the latest things and so on, especially if they are beautiful and so on. But yeah, I'm not into whatever the latest is and so on. And I remember I got some Oculus things that I got for free from Facebook and gave them to you. And I never used them once or twice.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8248.374

I mean, I've used VR in my lab, but I don't want to spend time in VR. And also, as my conversation with one of your collaborators here revealed before this podcast, I love mechanical things and the details, the analog world. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8265.383

So, yeah, digital is interesting and fascinating in some ways, but I like things, you know, like mechanical watches, cameras that click when you press them and so on, but not artificially. Okay. So I really like that. I like things that are very classical and so on in many ways. And I enjoy that. I like technology. Don't misunderstand me. And I use it a lot.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8286.09

And I use it and I do new things with them and I get patents and so on. But yeah, I'm not a techie guy in the same sense. I like to have an analog life, not a digital life. Riding a bicycle is analog. Walking is analog. Sitting and meditating is analog. Of course, you can also listen through the Internet to a good thing that helps you meditate or go to sleep. Don't misunderstand me.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8312.841

But I don't have this fascination with things and so on. I mean, some people do, but...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8318.123

It seems like a lot of people have a fascination with the future. You seem very grounded in the present.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8323.405

I've never read a single book of science fiction. Most of the people I work with, and I admire them, they all come with ideas from books in science fiction. They always say, did you read this or that? And I say, I have no idea. I never liked it. I like to read about real people with real blood and real feelings. Science fiction, to me, is devoid of that. It's imagining droids doing this or that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8345.516

I couldn't care less.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8346.716

Because I always think that physicists must love science fiction.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8350.92

Never, never, never read a single book or looked at it in a movie or science fiction. I couldn't care less. I don't relate to that. I don't think that these people display human-like behavior anyhow. So, I mean, I'm not saying that it's not interesting to others.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8365.494

You're not a futurist.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8367.285

No, no, even though they call me a futurist because I always anticipate things.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8370.806

Right, but you're not somebody who, like, thinks about what life is going to be like 100 years from now.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8376.368

No, no, I like to know life is now. Yes, yes. And I also, as Niels Bohr once said, it is hard to predict anything, especially the future. Okay, we all predict the past very well. I don't know what's gonna go. I mean, you know, we've seen things happening, unbelievable things. I mean, the technology that allows you to become such a worldwide known phenomenon is because of the technology.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8400.034

Imagine if you were just declaiming the Roman Senate centuries ago. I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing now, but with no microphones or cameras. Right. Okay. So yeah, I'm not a futurist and that's it.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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People tell me I am because I anticipate things, but not because I imagine a world in which... I couldn't care less about going to Mars, for instance, even though Elon Musk thinks it's very important. Do you think it's a cool project? I don't know. I want to ask him why. And then he tells me things like, he says things like, well, you know, civilization is going to die here.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

843.133

And I think, and, you know, I reflected a lot on this, when you're psychologically in adolescence, because my parents made me jump two grades, so I was much younger than my classmates. And that created a lot of problems for me. I mean, at the time when, you know, you're developing and so on, all the boys were talking about girls and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8436.888

We are going to asphyxiate. And so I don't know. I mean, let it happen. I don't know. Just enjoy now, you know. You're not worried about the future? In that sense, oh, I'm an optimist. I believe that technology will solve the global warming problem, everything. It's obvious how to solve it. There's nothing very mysterious. Nuclear power is going to do it, you know? Absolutely.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Once we get over our preconceived notions of nuclear power.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right. I mean, very few people have ever died of a nuclear accident, let's face it. Yeah, they need to name it something else. Maybe, yeah. Like many things that at once were thought to be dangerous, when renamed, turn out to not be so dangerous that when renamed, people are willing to adopt them.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8478.843

Yeah, right, yeah. So, yeah, I don't worry too much about the future. I think that people are ingenious and wise enough to steer away from the brink, hopefully.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8489.571

You don't seem to worry too much generally. You're not a big worrier. No. Yeah. You and I are different that way. Huh? You and I are different that way. Yeah. You worry a lot, yes. Not if I keep busy. Oh, okay. These days, a lot less. I think at the transition points between different circumstances and at the transition points between different career things, I think it makes sense to worry.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8514.725

It sort of drives some of the urgency to make sure that, you know, you... you know, reach for the next rung and grab it, right? And not, you know, not miss. I mean, there's been, I think there's been elements of uncertainty in my life where I felt like, okay, I'm gonna ground to the things I can control, but no, I don't stay up at night worrying about things.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8536.383

Also, I think meditation is profoundly effective at this. Suddenly, you're here, and that stays. The past is the past. You cannot do anything, and the future hasn't arrived. So what the heck? I really believe that, and it has helped me immensely. The few things I'm very proud of, I went for my medical checkup a year ago, and the doctor says, I'd love to hear you breathe.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8558.761

I said, what's so wrong with my breathing? He said, it's so slow and complicated. So you got over the white coat syndrome.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8564.54

Yes, because of meditation. You sent me your lab results this morning, so everything looks great. You've always been regular about exercise, not excessive. You're never one of the marathoners or the 5 a.m. in the pool people, but no. I tried runs to run a marathon, actually. Yeah. I mean, it's very common in the area where, you know, in and around Stanford to be pretty extreme about athletics.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8589.376

That was never your thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8590.476

No.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Steady, long-distance runner.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8593.198

Yeah, I told you that once. I'm not a sprinter. Yeah, some people are, and by the way, I admire them immensely. You mean in life, like we're speaking metaphorically?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8599.603

Yeah, in general, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I still was really interested, understanding why the excitement and so on, you know, I was very young. It gave me a sense of order. You know, reading a book about physics and understanding that there are laws that tell you how things work gave me a tremendous sense of order and power.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8600.304

There are some people who really can do things incredibly fast and they move from one thing to the other and so on. Yeah, I like people who reflect some wisdom. For instance, I have a, it's very strange for someone like me, but I see a Buddhist monk and I just suddenly, I feel calmer by just seeing that person, you know.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8620.082

I don't know, there is something, it's not just the spirituality, the power they have to be here, totally and absolutely. It's impressive to me. I mean, some other people say, okay, he has funny robes or something, you know. I like that a lot. It's not necessarily a way, I mean,

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8636.443

My therapist used to say to me that to use meditation to move away from trouble and troubling thoughts is not a good idea. So you have to embrace the world too. But I use it just to stay calm and to enjoy and to see things for what they are. And I think it's, yeah. Yeah, the future is the future. I don't know.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8656.688

You can only control what you can control.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But, you know, there are some people who are worried all the time about the future, you know. Given your understanding of quantum mechanics, relativity, and the real world, and perhaps just generally knowing what you know and experiencing what you've experienced, do you believe in some sort of higher power organizing force? Or let's just be blunt, do you believe in God?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8685.543

Well, okay, the word God has a lot of implications, right? I mean, I don't necessarily, I don't believe in a God that keeps track of what you and I are doing at this point. There are too many people and so on. So I don't believe in this notion of, you know, of an agent there that is somehow knowing what everybody on this planet is doing, you know, and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8707.064

I do feel sometimes, and especially because of the studies I have, and actually from reading people who have been very, very deep, you know, in particular the thoughts of people like Einstein, Heisenberg, and so on, that there seems to be at times a sense of an organizing principle in the universe and to learn those rules.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8725.614

So there is this notion, I mean, philosophically it's called pantheism, that God is in nature already. Spinoza and all these people studied this. That is very appealing to me. The notion that there is something, that this thing is, if it's evolving, it's like an entity, but not an entity that says, oh, tomorrow, you know, you'll die or so on. I mean, you'll die, you'll die.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8748.41

There are lots of events that lead to death or to happiness and so on, but not because someone is out there checking. I mean, I don't believe that it's enough memory to store all this, although today I saw you can buy SanDisk memory terabytes that is this big. So I don't believe in that, but it's a matter of belief, not anything else.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8768.388

Unfortunately, these beliefs are translated sometimes in complicated action. I do believe that there is a sense of mystery. Sometimes I once heard, I don't know who said it, but it's a very good sentence that if you listen to Beethoven say, I mean, the man struggled, but it's amazing he was able to create that music.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

877.756

So, you know, everything else was a little bit in flow and the family and my own relationships with friends and girlfriends or whatever. And going back to science, it was just a sense of order. And I still remember those days. It was very, very soothing in a way.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8789.506

On the other hand, Mozart seems to have been getting the messages from heavens, you know, on a daily basis, just wrote it down. So some people are given this connection to something much bigger. And you have access to that through listening to that music, the experiences we have.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8804.411

There is this idea out there that consciousness doesn't just exist within our brains, but as sort of a collective network and things come through us, not just as individuals.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8813.415

Jungian thing is a lot of that. I'm very interested in the word spiritual and what it means, you know, to see that things transcend our particular needs at any point. But the idea of a God that tells you one thing or the other is funny. You know, if you look at any movie, you know, Braveheart or whatever, you see that one group of warriors has a priest saying, God is with us.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8837.618

And the other one is about to engage and says the same thing to the other group. That's a little bit funny, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8842.53

Well, I think humans and human brains in particular are amazing. Amazing what human brains can do. This computer in our heads is spectacular. And yet it also has limitations. And I think, well, put differently, does it make you nervous or worry you that I seem to have an increasing interest in... God and religion?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8865.448

No, I think that is a beautiful journey in which you're in. And there are two pieces to this, provided you don't start using this to somehow spout arguments why people shouldn't do this or that. No, no, it's only my own exploration of my own life.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I respect that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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I think it's a very important thing. You know, there is an issue here that I read reading Wilson, actually, E.O. Wilson, which, you know, he wrote this beautiful book on human nature. And he claims that the religious instinct comes from a submissive component in us that animals have. Dogs are submissive.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8899.414

And we believe that we need to be submissive to a king and to something beyond a king, you know, some deity or something else.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8905.217

That's his theory. I certainly don't feel any compulsion to be submissive to other humans. I mean, I think in knowing the limitations of the human brain and cognition, I don't care how smart, I don't care how successful an individual or a group is, it's very clear that the human brain is limited in parsing the universe that we're in.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So it's like a touchstone. Yes, yes, yes. And what grade were you, this teacher, was this like middle school, high school?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Otherwise, we wouldn't continue to have the same issues over and over. Although I do like to think that we're falling forward, we're evolving forward as opposed to devolving as a species. But we tend to repeat a lot of the same mistakes over and over again.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8934.829

There's also a technical thing here. We sometimes confuse randomness with premonition or God doing something. I mean, dodging a bullet... by turning your head, as our next president did, is an incredible thing. The probability is so, so, so small. But that doesn't mean that there was someone who said, turn your head, do it, and so the bullet will pass.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8956.465

I mean, we ascribe causality to something that was truly random. It could have also, in another scenario, the same turn of the head would have been to the other side, and this person would be dead. But sometimes we are confronted with these incredible coincidences.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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that we cannot explain and we say, oh, it must be God that made sure that you and I met or that we thought the same thoughts and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

8978.931

Although as a biologist who started off as a neurodevelopmental biologist, I think I just had to see – there are two things that changed my understanding of what might be possible. One was Barbara Chapman, my advisor, once treated me to an experiment. It was kind of a funny thing. Typical Barbara. You know how nerdy she was. She said – are you willing to stay up all night?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

900.56

Yeah, high school, yeah. I was 13 or 14 years old, yeah. When I finally, I started listening to this and I said, wow, this is impressive. It's powerful. There are ways to know what's true and what's not true. You just don't speculate on things. But most of this stuff, I didn't really understand.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9001.301

And I was like, okay, yeah. And she took zebrafish eggs and fertilized them. And I sat for 11 hours with food. I got up to use the restroom and I watched a zebrafish egg duplicate and become a fish. like in real time with my eyes. Not some movie on YouTube, although that's impressive too. People can look these up.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9022.889

But to just actually see life emerge from a set of cells through its own organizing principles, all of which can be explained by genes, transcription factors, the physics of the mitotic spindle. I mean, math and biology and chemistry can explain all of it. But there was something truly spectacular about it that seems so non-random because it's not random. And then the other one is that

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9045.043

I mean, I guess I've had enough experiences with prayer and the consequences of prayer in my real life that I just, I sort of can't get my head around the idea that there's not a God or some sort of organizing force. I just, I can't accept it because there's, yes, there's causality, reverse causality, correlation and mistaking correlation and causality, but somehow, like...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9067.054

I mean, I like to think I'm grounded in science and reality, but I don't think science can explain it all. Oh, no.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9074.439

And I think that this experience of this spirituality, for instance, I remember, it still happens, spending a night outdoors and looking at the sky. I mean, it's an incredible thing, the stars, and you feel so small, and yet there is order to all that. It's not just random stuff.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9091.008

I mean, they move according to laws that fortunately we humans were able to discover, which is an amazing thing when you think about it. Dogs did not discover gravity, you know?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Certainly not Costello.

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We talk about this in the context of understanding oneself in relation to others, family, community, including scientific community and what it is like to come from a different country. My father immigrated from South America. What it was like to do science in the United States then and now. cultural differences. And of course, we touch on some of our relationship as well. How could we not?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9101.23

Costello was gravity. Yeah. So I really think that there is something to be said about these spiritual experiences. And I really believe that very importantly. And I listen to people talk. I recently have been looking at some stuff that C.S. Lewis, you know, he was a man who was studying the...

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9118.693

the sagas and the mythology of the Vikings and so on, and eventually became a devout Christian, thinking that this was the only answer because all religions have the same element. So I understand that. I respect it. I experienced that at times in my life. But when I think seriously about it, I think that the moment we have this computer and we can get glimpses of all this,

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But I don't believe that it's this notion. No one can prove to me that there is someone there organizing my life minute by minute or second by second. I don't believe that. I do believe that there are fantastic chances in life and randomness, beautiful ones, okay? And, you know, Having you and Lara as children is a fantastic randomness in my life. Hopefully it wasn't too random. No, no.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9169.452

In the sense that, you know, children, you know, you know children that come unhealthy, whatever. I mean, you know, it's a very impressive thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Yeah, the number of things that have to organize to create a healthy child is, it's truly a miracle. Yeah, true, true.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9183.726

Yeah, and I think, but a lot of it is random, too, you know? I mean, the same set of parents can produce two different set of children, too, okay? I mean, that's a very, very important... Laura and I are pretty different. Oh, absolutely, but in very beautiful ways, too.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So, I mean, neither of you does behave or conducts a life that, you know, I would be unhappy or your mother would be unhappy with. But going back to this, I believe that, indeed, spirituality is important. I have a lot of access to that through classical music. There are times... That I really believe that I can get very, very emotional listening to music. Very emotional.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

920.847

Then I had this cousin of mine, Hector, who was already gone, but I would go to his parents' house, and there there were his books, all these incredible books on quantum mechanics, relativity. And I would just take them home, and I didn't really comprehend a lot of the math, but somehow it seemed impressive. It was like looking into a mechanism or something.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9220.989

My wife always notices it when I do that. And I think that then you're having access to something very different. Of course it can be explained physiologically by all sorts of resonances and so on. But who cares?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9233.854

You mentioned that you can peer into the future with ideas that you're working on and yet you don't get too far ahead. Like you're not thinking like 100 years from now, what's it going to look like? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the past?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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Sometimes, sometimes. I'm very safe. Because I left my family when I was still very young, I always had a certain nostalgia for things. I became friends with a very impressive guy in France, Claude Jopard. I think he was the director of the Geophysics Institute. And both of us had very similar parents in different – French and Argentina, but still – And similar educations.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9275.577

And I have sometimes a certain nostalgia that is almost melancholy about the way we grew up and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9283.482

Melancholy. A little bit of that. I recall your stories about growing up in Argentina, like you would have 10, 15 cousins over for lunch every Sunday. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't sound melancholy. No, no.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9293.83

But there were moments, moments of loneliness, moments of times where I felt very misunderstood. I had, unfortunately, a very punishing mother experience. But I still remember her and I think about her in ways that are not necessarily always very happy. I was looking at photos a while ago and there are pictures of her that is, you know, she's smiling coming out of the Pacific Ocean in Carmel.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9317.282

She took a walk and so on. But I reflect back in the past in that sense. I mean, and sometimes, you know, I'm asked, you know, how did you grow up? My wife being Danish, she grew up in a very different way from, you know, upper middle class Argentines. So, you know, we reflect on that, you know, the kinds of childhoods we had and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9337.619

But not in the sense that, you know, oh, I wish I had that now. No regrets. No regrets. Well, not many, not many. That's good. I mean, there is one regret that is more theoretical than anything else, which is if I look at my family, my brother stayed, produced family, children, grandchildren, and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9358.947

I came here and I produced children, grandchildren, and there are going to be two diverging branches of the family.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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We still get together. We got together last year for your birthday.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9367.349

Yeah, no, I know. That's what is so important to me, yes. But I think about it sometimes. And when I go back and I see the lives very similar to what I had, different perhaps, there is a certain sense of thinking about the past.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9380.498

But I also realize that if I didn't take the steps I took, I would be as miserable as some of my old friends that are really struggling even to find meaning in what they do or even surviving economically. So I was really lucky.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9394.793

So was I because I wouldn't have existed because you wouldn't have met mom.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9398.095

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe you would have. No, no, no, no. But I'm grateful I didn't grow up in Buenos Aires. I love the city. I love the country. I couldn't have done any of the things I've done in South America given maybe, but the landscape was just completely different.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

940.833

And I used to take them to school, and one of my teachers once said, you know, you seem to be interested in this, but you don't understand it, so you need to learn it. And he was the one who started pushing me into this. On the other hand, my family was saying you should become a lawyer, just, you know, my brother and father. And that never interested you? No.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9411.345

Oh, I go there and after a week I want to come back.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9413.206

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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So you love this country? I love this country. I feel very much part of this country. I'm very grateful to what this country has done for me, for my family, and that includes you and your sister, okay, and my wife. When did you become a citizen? Oh, many, many years ago. And I really did it consciously, not because, I mean, there were practical things, but no, I really believe in it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9433.453

I really believe it's an incredible country and it gives incredible opportunities to people. As Elon says, Elon Musk, I'm also an immigrant. I'm very happy to be one. Yeah, you've always been a patriot. Absolutely. And on the other hand, as I said, Argentina is complicated. I go there and a lot of smells and things, you know, bring memories that are amazing. The food's not bad either. Huh?

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How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9454.182

The food's not bad. Yeah, yeah. But it's also the whole atmosphere. And the first two, three days are an incredible experience of meeting friends and talking with them and so on. But after a while, I also see a darker side to it. I must tell you that, on the other hand, my country-in-law, Denmark, is also a country that I like immensely.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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These nice people and pleasant and soft, very soft, especially in summer.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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But the Danes are also strong people. The average Dane is so smart. I think the high school education there must be among the best in the world.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9489.467

Yeah, there is a notion of proficiency. I mean, people are proficient at what they do. Yeah, you go to a store, you have a problem, an airline or whatever, you'll get someone who really knows how to solve it. But there's also a very, it's a small society, very homogeneous, tremendous sense of humor, which I enjoy. And it's very soft. People, you know, enjoy life.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

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They have notions like slow food movements and things of that sort. So I like it. I could not live there because it's, you know, it's a very homogeneous way of behaving. You know, the Lutheran ethic is there. They're not religious, but they're Lutherans. So I feel very comfortable in Europe and so on. But I like being here, yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9531.663

Yeah, I feel like our family now includes so many different nationalities and religions and backgrounds and philosophies and political stances. Well, it's good too. Yeah, it's great. It's starting to look like the UN with some extra.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9544.753

Well, I grew up in a family that had an ideological diversity. It was incredible, incredible. That's good. Yeah, so that was also good to be as a child to hear these arguments about politics and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9554.86

Yeah, I hear a few of those now. arguments about politics. We won't get into politics. One thing that I did want to say, however, is that I remember a long time ago, and I'm certain because I wrote it in my journal, you said politically incorrect views are often right. Is that true still?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9572.222

Yes, yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9573.323

Still true for you, I should say.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9574.565

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because this has only to be judged in time. Okay. I think that the issue of political incorrectness is some kind of a mob behavior that says you should think like us. OK, we should be able to express our views with respecting others and so on. And we should be respected for that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9594.725

I think that this whole notion that others are telling you what to think or not to think is a little bit complicated. And I must say something, which I hope it doesn't get me in trouble with my Danish side of the family or friends. Societies like the Scandinavian societies that are extremely uniform in thinking, the word should is used all the time. Yeah, you should do this. You shouldn't do that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

961.605

It's interesting because now I'm very interested in aspects of constitutional law and so on when I hear about arguments against, you know, the Supreme Court and so on. I became very interested in law and economics later on, I mean, just to read about it.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9618.45

Good that you did it. It's a very, they enforce behavior in a very, very particular way. It's not a hurting instinct, but there is a very, very strict Lutheran tradition of telling you what you should and you shouldn't do. So I know very few people and I've been going to Denmark for many, many years, that really have iconoclastic ideas that are away from the mean, and they're considered odd, okay?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9644.927

Very few, including the physicists, and they have fantastic school of physics there. Niels Bohr was there. So it's a society that conformity is the issue there, right? So on the other hand, I think that it's good to think differently, and, you know, There's a man, perhaps you heard of him. I know, I mean, I admire him. He died, Freeman Dyson.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9665.416

He was on a level with Feynman and Engelman, by the way. He used to have very strange ideas too. He used to say global warming. What's wrong with it? The Sahara is going to be a garden. Yeah. You know, the Sahara Desert will become a garden.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9678.907

People will be able to eat all that food. Well, I think people hear that, but then they counter it against these, you know, very heart-wrenching pictures of, like, polar bears on ice caps that are shrinking, this kind of thing. There are more polar bears today than when Mr. Al Gore said that we're going to die.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9692.116

Listen, I'm not going to argue climate change with you because I have no knowledge there. No, no. I'm not countering. I'm just saying, you know, like, I mean, this is getting very intense on the Internet now because the arguments on both sides seem pretty strong, at least as they're presented. So who's right?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9710.868

No, the question is what can we do about it? That's the issue. And I think that technology and wisdom are going to solve it. I think so. I really believe that very strongly. I'm an optimist when it comes to that. But what I'm talking about being politically incorrect is this idea of saying things that a group of people say you shouldn't be saying or thinking those thoughts.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9728.356

And the question is, can we debate those things rationally or nicely, respecting people's beliefs? Okay. And yeah, I believe in that very strongly. And I think being politically incorrect is a way of saying you're smiling at them, but It's okay. Why not? Who said that we shouldn't be like that?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

974.034

But what my father was talking about at the dining room table was all about strategies of, you know, getting something done half an hour before the opposition so you win a case. I mean, I was totally interested in that.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9749.103

I remember encountering the first libertarians when I was already working as a physicist, and they were saying to me, why are we afraid of the Russians? I said, well, you think they're going to invade the United States? Can you imagine Russia invading? I mean, if they invade, how are they going to control us? They had these arguments. They were very funny arguments. Why do we need an army?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9771.189

Why do we need taxes? And I really thought that was so provocative or so interesting. Do you consider yourself a libertarian? In many ways. I like the idea of liberty. I believe very strongly in it. I mean, this country was founded on that. I think that our founding fathers really believed in it, and I admire them for that. You know, reading Jefferson and so on is really inspiring to me.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9793.41

I think that some of the political movement is a little bit odd. They always end up with political candidates that go nowhere and so on.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9801.355

Why do you think that is?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9802.676

Why do you think that is? If they're so rational, they're often among the smartest people in the room. But they are not strategically smart. I've met at times libertarians that think incredible thoughts and they live in Silicon Valley and they're poor. I mean, even though they are the ones who are supposed to know. Some are poor. Some are. Some are not. But I'm saying it's very interesting.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9822.791

They choose presidential candidates no one ever heard of.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9825.633

I think many of them are, you know, they are on the spectrum in a way that doesn't allow them to get into the minds of other people in a way that would allow them to convince other people about their arguments. Yes. I mean, a lot of politics, as we know, is show business. I mean, in this recent election, it was all posturing. It was all about grabbing emotion. It was not about logic.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9847.215

It was about emotion. Yeah, I have several of my people that, you know, they put all their money to freeze themselves.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

985.863

I'm sensing a bit of a theme, which is that social dynamics and what other people do, regardless of whether or not they like it or it earns them a particular living, didn't capture you. Like the idea that people and their groups and their ways of thinking and behaving, while that they may not bother you.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9852.983

You gonna cry over yourself? No. My dad and I have had this running joke for a lot of years because someone we know very well and several people we know well have set aside significant amounts of money to have their heads or entire bodies frozen on the idea that they're going to be brought back later Han Solo style. You've always laughed at this idea.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9870.868

No, but not only that, there's a colleague of mine at Stanford who accuses me of being friends with a guy that is like that. And I told this guy, I said, you know, he thinks that you're a bad influence on me. And the guy said, well, tell him that we are the ones who are going to come back and do what we believe. He's going to be gone. You're not interested in living to be 200? No.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9890.251

It's not an issue. These people are interested in living for another thousand years. So when they wake up, they see how the world looks. They read science fiction. So they are very interested to know what the world looks like once they wake up.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9901.598

Well, there are people in the health space that are trying to not die, you know, Brian Johnson and others.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9905.741

That's a different story.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9906.821

I mean, what's your thought on trying to live to be 150 or something like that?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9911.124

Well, if you can live – the issue is not the age. It's the conditions of your body and mind, okay? That's the issue. I had the misfortune and unfortunate of having two parents that lived very long lives. One was incredibly – my father was incredibly lucid until the end.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9928.332

My mother had everything, you know, every dementia and complications that came from, you know, being an anorexic all her life and so on. So my father enjoyed being lucid until the end. And so he didn't take care of himself physically so well. So the idea is if you live up to 100 or 150 or 200 and you can still do the things you enjoy in life is one thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9951.243

To be like my mother, who couldn't even comprehend what was in front of her when you put a cup of tea, You know, then it's very sad, but it can happen at the age of 35, you know. So yeah, I'm not into a race to live forever. I want to live healthily. I want to enjoy life. Enjoyment is the most important piece.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9969.672

What's the point of being, you know, tethered to tubes all over the place, you know, flat on a bed and you say, oh, I made another year of my life. I mean, that's not really a life, at least for me.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9982.233

do you worry about and or wish for anything for me, for Laura?

Huberman Lab

How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

9987.917

Yes. To be super happy people. No, I don't want to use the word happy. I want to see you joyful. Joy. Joy is more important than happiness. Joy is a state of mind. Happiness is, okay, yeah, I said a list of things I want to have and I have them and I smile a lot. Joyfulness is this sense of being in yourself, and I would like that. I mean, you two are very different.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

0.41

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. Stuart McGill is a distinguished professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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That's the plan. Well, I've certainly had a blast today, Dr. McGill. This has been amazing. I mean, you've given us such a wealth of knowledge about the back, its anatomy, neurology, the sources of pain for those that have back pain, avenues to relieve back pain, avenues for people to stave off back pain, including the big three, but not limited to the big three.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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You also gave us a wonderful window into the precision with which you approach assessment. And during the introduction and also in the show note captions, I mentioned and linked to the many clinicians that you've trained all over the world so that if people want to try and access direct coaching and rehabilitation, they can do that.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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I also really appreciate the books you've written, and we linked to that as well, Back Mechanic. And I really just appreciate your devotion to public education through your own channels, through your students, the many, many, many peer-reviewed papers that you've published. I mean, I can't overemphasize this enough. You have a vast number of high quality peer reviewed publications in these areas.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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And it's just wonderful to sit across from somebody who's devoted their professional life to this really important area that so many people confront, whether or not they be athletes or conventional exercisers, or just people who are experiencing some pain or want to get in shape or all of the above.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to extend a really deep, heartfelt and genuine thank you. Thank you so much.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Well, thank you for those words. It's a labor of love for me, and that's extremely gratifying to hear. And God willing, I'll be in your kind of shape at your age. Let's do this again.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Thanks. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. To learn more about his work, as well as to find a link to his excellent book, Back Mechanic, The Step-by-Step McGill Method to Fix Back Pain, please see the show note caption.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Also in the caption, you'll find a link to backfitpro.com, which is Dr. McGill's website, where he has links to specific practitioners you can work with if you're experiencing back pain. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter,

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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as well as protocols for fitness, which we call the foundational fitness protocol, includes everything, sets, reps, cardiovascular training. Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide us your email. But I should point out, we do not share your email with anybody.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Dr. McGill is a true encyclopedia on the topics of back physiology and anatomy, sources of back pain and treatments for back pain. So it's truly a special opportunity to be able to learn from him in such immense detail and in such a clear and actionable way.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So facet angles that are too close together, basically, a small angle.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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I mean, is it fair to say that if we are naturally flexible, For instance, like my sister can, you know, like her fingers can bend back really easily. Her shoulder extension, which I guess for people that aren't familiar with shoulder extension, you know, she can like let's say you're leaning up against a railing with your back to the railing.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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The railings just let's just say is just above lower back height and you can put both hands on it. parallel. So your arms are close together, like very close to the torso. And people don't do this quickly because you can tear something or injure something. But then with feet about, I don't know, a foot or two away from that bar, you can do a knee bend and basically the arms go back behind you.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Like I happen to have a fair degree of just natural shoulder extension ability. I'm not particularly flexible, quote unquote, but that's just how I'm structured. Yeah. I have some friends that can't do that to save their life. But I wouldn't consider myself hyperflexible. My sister is a bit more flexible. We're related, obviously.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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By the end of today's episode, you will have a quite thorough understanding about the anatomy and physiology of the back as it relates to a healthy back, to back pain, and of course, you'll have various remedies for dealing with back pain, preventing back pain, and for strengthening your back for all sorts of different kinds of movement, not just for exercise and sport, but also to move through your daily activities pain-free and with ease and mobility at any age.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So would people like her or people that tend to be pretty flexible naturally, would they be wise to avoid certain activities if their goal is to remain pain-free? I mean, you talk about the St. Bernard running program. on the Greyhound track, you know, we all can enjoy things recreationally, but of course we don't want to injure ourselves.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So is somebody who's naturally flexible, should they avoid certain sports and activities? And conversely, if somebody is naturally stiffer, thicker spine, thicker joints, should they avoid certain activities?

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

1606.02

It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. Unless somebody is seeking to be a world-class athlete in something, in which case they should probably pay attention to their genetics and see whether or not it lines up well with a given sport. Although there have been...

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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exceptions where people who are incredibly genetically, let's just say, biased toward not being able to perform well in a sport have nonetheless succeeded in performing at a world-class level. Those are exceedingly rare exceptions.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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for most people who want to do things recreationally, like the heavier set person with a thicker spine who wants to golf or do ballet, perhaps, or the thinner willowy person who wants to get into powerlifting, for instance.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Are there certain things that they should each consider and embrace as activities in order to make themselves more resilient, more pain resilient and more apt to have higher performance? For instance, would the willowy person, so to speak, do well to build up some of the musculature around the spine to compensate for the thinness of that spine?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, one of the keys to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that your mattress is suited to your unique sleep needs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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And would the person with the heavier or thicker spine do well to try and encourage more pliability of their discs somehow?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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But they look like each other.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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The people on the podium look very similar in structure.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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What does that mean? Well, if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress made by Helix. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

216.899

So if you'd like to sleep better by sleeping on a mattress that's customized to your unique sleep needs, go to helixsleep.com slash huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's ideal for you. Right now, Helix is giving up to 30% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 30% off and two free pillows.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2177.116

So I know that you loathe and avoid generalizations with good reason. But given that most people listening to or watching this are probably not aiming to become elite athletes. I know I'm certainly not. Can we safely make at least one or two generalizations about what we each and all can do to try and avoid let's say back pain and injury by either diversifying

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2214.065

our training or avoiding certain types of training. For instance, let's take the three major phenotypes, and this is obviously not how the world works, but the classic ectomorphic phenotype, very thin, very willowy, small joints, long and lithe, or lithe.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2233.84

the mesomorph, thicker, more muscular, and then the so-called endomorph, the more heavier set, maybe even carrying some extra body fat, et cetera. You don't really know what's under there. They could fall into either of the other two phenotypes. I could imagine, based on everything that you're saying, that a good rule of thumb would be avoid the types of activities that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2261.531

are outside of your natural genetic propensity based on body type, at least in the extremes. Like if you're not very bendy, don't do seven days a week of yoga, okay? But I could also imagine the opposite, which is if you're not very bendy, do seven days of yoga because that's going to allow you to become more bendy.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

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Or the person that is naturally shaped more like a shot putter, let's say the mesomorph or endomorph, and you could say, well, Um, there'd be great power lifter. I mean, I knew kids like this in high school, you know, PE class, they're like, okay, weight training today. None of us had done weight training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2297.284

And then the kid, you know, lies down and, you know, and pushes, you know, three 15 and you're like, Oh goodness, you know, like that's, that's wild. Um,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2306.997

But maybe they shouldn't be weight training if their goal is to be all around fit, which I think is the goal of most people, to be able to carry some luggage at the airport without having to stop every once in a while and suck for air, to be able to lean down and grab something out of a cabinet, pick up a kid, do some hard work.

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Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2327.242

labor in the yard, move some logs and things like that, to be able to do stuff without getting injured and without being so sore in the following days that you feel like you need extensive rehabilitation. So again, I know you like to avoid generalizations, but should we make it a point to train against our predisposition in order to offset the imbalances that would otherwise occur?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2353.746

Or would we be wise to lean into our strengths and just not touch stuff that taps into our weaknesses? I understand the question.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

238.874

Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

24.394

As a professor for more than three decades, Dr. McGill has analyzed the spines of injured people as well as healthy people and developed methods to treat spine injuries and pain as well as to improve spine biomechanics in anybody. He has authored more than 250 peer reviewed research articles on these topics, making him a true world expert.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2450.486

I just meant oops, because clearly that's not the way you went. Not that going to plumbing school would be a bad decision for some, but in your case, you went a very different direction.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2460.593

Sure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

257.304

There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, great therapy consists of having good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about the issues that you're dealing with. Second of all, that therapist should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

273.214

And third, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better understand not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also your relationship to yourself and to career goals and school goals, meaning excellent therapy should also inspire positive action.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2756.428

So if somebody has pain in a given movement, say standing up, um, after they sit for too long, um, um, a particular style of hip hinge, deadlift or squat, or when they run, for instance, would it be wise for them to think about the exact movement that makes the pain the worst?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2782.256

in the moment that they're doing the movement or afterwards, because oftentimes pain will arrive after we engage in a certain activity, but during the activity, that pain is shut down, which by the way, is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. And, you know, might be worth some mention as to, a couple of the reasons why that occurs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2800.974

We always think, oh, blood flow, it's warm, but clearly it's more. It's much more than that. It's much more than that. Yeah, for sure. So let's say I've pain in a knee when I run. Should I avoid running in that gate that causes pain and work around it? Seems to me that would be the logical choice. Right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

289.145

BetterHelp makes it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you really resonate with and that can provide the benefits that I just described. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

2993.251

It must be humbling for adults to get down and do a baby crawl.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3027.767

Does he wear one of those elastic lifting suits when he does that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3070.68

The neural aspects are fascinating. When he does that incredible squat poundage, does he... take the bar off a standard squat rack and then walk it back? Or is it one of those ones where the bar is suspended from two hooks and then he takes it from there?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3086.383

So that particular lift was lifted off a monolith where he didn't have to walk it out. So he takes it off. So it's hanging from hooks, then the hooks are brought away. The reason I ask is it sounds like he's optimized for one very specific movement in a couple of you know, a couple of planes and nothing else.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

309.969

Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3104.632

Because walking with a thousand plus pounds on one's shoulders is also a feat in of itself.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3110.239

Shuffling backwards, as it were.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3193.377

So best to not be carrying a willow spine for that one. You want to be like a Muir Woods, a redwood trunk.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3211.324

I love the analogy to dog breeds. I love going to dog shows. I've only done it a few times, not to actually see the prancing around of the dogs. That doesn't interest me at all. The best part about a really excellent dog show is you go back behind the the arena where all the different breeds reside. So you can see the lineup of the finest Irish Wolfhounds, the finest English Bulldogs, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

323.292

In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3237.377

Hundreds of different breeds. And you really get to see these genetic extremes, not just of structure, but of temperament. And you get to see the similarity in temperament of the Bulldogs. And of course, there's variation. Some of them are a bit more jolly, others more stoic. You know, the terriers are magnificent in their own right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3257.221

And as you pointed out earlier with respect to the podium, more similar to each other within breed than across breeds in terms of temperament. But there's variation within breed. The reason I bring this up and the reason I bring this up now is that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3270.134

If you look at the movement to those animals, even just the way they walk, whether or not they enjoy a flexion of the paw as they stride or whether or not they tend to stride differently. I don't have language for this. I'm not an expert in this, but I have a visual system that works and I can see that they may move differently. They actually walk differently, even at the same pace.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3294.539

And then you look at human beings, shorter, taller, medium, more lithe, more heavyset. And it's amazing that we don't take this into consideration, that we all move very differently, even within species, but that we've been into these groups.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3311.653

So when someone walks into your laboratory, as it were, your clinic slash laboratory, are you paying attention to how they move into the room, irrespective of pain? 100%.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

339.897

So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired, tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3420.923

I recall seeing Michael Johnson sprinting very upright. Yes. So when I think upright, I think either flat lower back or a little bit of a... of an arch in the lower back, this kind of movement.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3436.65

Well, I think he was 200 and 400. He was. Which is unusual, someone that could win gold in both.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3506.763

So they bow the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

355.888

I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3572.967

I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3592.117

Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3609.931

To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3628.166

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I love where this conversation is going because there's tremendous variation in body shape and form out there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3651.047

And I'm certain that by now everybody listening is starting to think about, oh, am I more likely to have a willowy spine, a thinner spine or a thicker spine, the kind of pliability or what you called vertical stacking resilience that one spine or the other would have. And it brings me back to this question of,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3674.915

What can we each and all do to try and create the strongest back as well as limit the propensity for pain assuming we don't have it yet? Okay. So I would say I'm kind of in the middle. I'm neither extremely lithe nor am I shaped like a – you know, like a kettlebell, kind of somewhere in between.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3697.874

So for me, I make it a point across my training week to include three resistance training sessions, three quote-unquote cardiovascular training sessions, one long, one medium, one short cardiovascular session. The lifting sessions are geared toward building or maintaining strength in a balanced way for me. Everyone is going to have different requirements.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3719.556

In other words, nothing is skewed toward one particular outcome like endurance or strength or power. And I think most people probably want something similar because they'd like to be able to meet the various demands of life. So I frame the question I'm about to ask that way because as people start to assess themselves, the question arises again,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3744.958

Should we try and compensate for our weaknesses by emphasizing a certain style of training a little bit more? And if so, what does that look like for the spine? You said earlier, and I love this quote, and I want to make sure I attribute it to you now and going forward, that all systems in the body require stress for better health. Optimal health. Thank you. For optimal health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

375.12

Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. Stuart McGill, welcome. Thank you, sir. Great to have you here. I'm a big fan of your work. I've watched a lot of your other content.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3766.272

So assuming that somebody has a thinner stature, they're more bendy, would they be wise to build up the muscles of the core, not just the abdominals, but the obliques and the lower back muscles, all around the spine in order to give it more stability? And would the person who has a thicker torso, thicker spine, thicker joints...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3788.081

do well to emphasize some additional yoga training, some additional anything that allows them to be more bendy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3894.415

Got it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3896.957

So backtracking a little bit, but making sure that I'm doing that with purpose. You need to know what generates the pain in order to try and localize the pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3907.846

But then the goal is not to repeat whatever creates the pain. Correct. Perhaps, what I'm hearing, the goal is to get... near the proximity of the pain, but not go there. Not generate the movement that recreates the pain, but take the movement as far as one can without creating the pain. And then think about where the instability or weakness or biomechanical failure is contributing to the pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

393.866

read your books, and I'm excited to discuss today what makes for a really strong, resilient back, what causes back pain and how to relieve it. And perhaps the bigger issue is what all of that allows for in terms of mobility and functionality, not just in sport, but in everyday life. So to kick things off, I'd like to ask a question that I think is on a lot of people's minds.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

3939.901

Okay, so now I understand why.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4060.343

Well, and there's some wisdom to not pushing into pain and extremes all the time. If the goal is to have a long arc of fitness or athletic career, a good friend of mine who's very accomplished in the fitness community, he says one of the best ways to get and stay in excellent shape your entire life is to train consistently, train reasonably hard. And we can talk about what his recommendation is.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4085.741

I'd love your thoughts. But as best as one can to not get hurt. You know, we forget about this. We hear so much about training consistently and pushing hard, but the not getting hurt part is key as well. Here's his recommendation on intensity. Can I share it with you and just get your thoughts?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4118.454

Nassim Taleb, yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4161.93

Yeah, there's some neuroscience, certainly some psychology, but certainly some neuroscience to support that in terms of how we reset our... kind of a reinforcement threshold.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

423.004

Most people aren't thinking about their back unless they have pain. So what causes back pain? You start with the easy questions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4266.05

No, it's excellent recommendations for everyone. His suggestion, and by the way, this is not for competitive athletes. This is just for exercisers, if you will, is to make 85% of one's workouts across the year at about 85% of muscle. Maximal intensity and output.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4288.093

So still constraining the total length of a session to whatever the goal of that session is, whether it's resistance training or cardiovascular training, but to not go all out, to go at 85% of one's subjective understanding of what all out on that day would be on that day. to make 10% of one's workouts across the year at somewhere between 90 to 95% intensity of what one could generate that day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4316.999

Again, 100% all out being subjective for that day. And then 5%, or even less, of their workouts all out, everything you could possibly give, quote unquote, leaving it all on the mat, whatever phrase one prefers. And I like that recommendation because it keeps things in check and it also creates an awareness of how intense one is training and it allows us to not

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4347.115

let the great night's sleep or the extra cup of coffee that we had or the great song that happens to be playing or the competitive spirit that's arising because someone joined you that day or asked you to join a workout to take you into the domain of harming yourself.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4362.792

In fact, I can look to the times when I've been injured training and almost always it's because somebody invited me to join their workout and we got into a little bit of a competitive spirit. And I'm not an ultra competitive person, but you push yourself to 100% on that day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4382.306

And two weeks later, you've got something you're dealing with, or two days later, you've got something and you go, God, was that really worth it? And I think unless one is a competitive athlete and that's competition day, it's probably not worth it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

44.525

During today's episode, we discuss spine anatomy, as well as the common sources of back pain. And we discuss some of the controversies as to the origins and different treatments for back pain. As you'll quickly learn, there is no one specific source of back pain, nor is there one specific solution to back pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4548.002

That's pretty heavy. Here I'm thinking about intensity, meaning, well, for resistance training, let's say that one could complete six repetitions at a given weight. But if they had a gun to their head, they could complete nine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4565.511

Okay. Well, then you're doing six. Again, this is crude calculations, right? But six, maybe seven, maybe cheating a little bit on that seventh repetition. If it's a run and like for me on Sundays, typically there's a long, slow jog, but maybe the slow in that component is a little bit subjective. So am I pushing a little bit harder than I'm comfortable or am I hitting kind of a cruising pace?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4593.553

Right. Okay. So 85% of max intensity for me would be staying at cruising pace and occasionally bumping up the, the speed a little bit. But on all out day, if it happens to be one, then it's, long, quote unquote, slow distance, but I'm trying to increase the speed of what I'm referring to as slow.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4614.046

So again, this is all very subjective, but we know on a given day, whether or not we're pushing past our comfort zone or not. And I'm not somebody who relies heavily on heart rate monitors and things like that. What I rely on is my consistency. This is the way that I've decided to stay in all around shape for, you know, more than three decades. I feel like I'm in decent shape.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4637.839

I'm not a great athlete. I'll never be the strongest person in the room or have the best endurance or the most speed or explosiveness, but I'm pretty sure I can keep up with most things pretty well. And I don't have pain. And I feel very grateful to not have pain. And I think it's because I've adopted a stance of, I don't wanna call it moderation, but of modulation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4748.979

Yeah, we had Dr. Sean Mackey.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4752.921

Yeah, Dr. Sean Mackey is our head of the, essentially the pain division at Stanford School of Medicine. He's an MD and PhD, and he's a big... proponent of the biopsychosocial model of pain, which probably makes sense for us to discuss now. As the name suggests, it incorporates psychological elements. It incorporates, of course, physiological elements.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

4775.325

And it points to, as I recall, seven or more sort of paths to dealing with pain, some of which include thoughts about one's emotional state. stress level, sleep. I mean, all of these things clearly play a role in pain and rehabilitation from pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5088.049

Yeah, surely the nervous system is involved in generating movement and feedback from the muscles and proprioception. And as you're describing, the nervous system creates our sense of pain. There's an emotional component to it, as Dr. Mackey pointed out and as you're reinforcing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5106.56

The neural circuits that control quote-unquote pain or give rise to pain involve the confluence of all of these things at some level. And I appreciate that you're willing to go into this biopsychosocial model of pain and acknowledge it because I think all too often in this space of biomechanics and pain and back pain in particular, people –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5130.902

you in some cases get labeled as only subscribing to one particular pattern of remedy or one particular framework, and that's simply not true. It's just not true. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that that's actually a reflection of other people placing a singular lens on you and your work, as opposed to your work having a singular lens.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5150.457

I know that you look at things through the rather complex prism that is back pain and back rehabilitation. So thank you for touching into the biopsychosocial model. And we'll put a link in the show note captions to that episode with Dr. Mackey because he went into this in some depth. And so it is the case that we've covered that model in pretty extensive detail.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5173.954

There's something that you said to me. ones that I really want to make sure we highlight, which is that people who embark on a particular style of training, not just sports selection, but style of training, like resistance training with heavier weights versus endurance training, running longer distances or swimming longer distances, will sometimes cultivate a certain, what should we call it,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5199.258

personality style or reactivity style that is probably independent of who they started off as. I mean, you can never separate these things completely. I mean, we could argue people who have a lot of mental endurance pick endurance sports or people that are rather ballistic in their personality, here I'm playing psychologist, pick sports with a lot of speed and ballistic motion involved.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5225.25

But perhaps the reverse is also true, that the more we engage in activities for which the nervous system is required to generate a particular pattern of movement, ballistic movement or endurance or strength, that we exacerbate certain aspects of our mental self, our emotional self as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5244.724

I realize this is not the stuff of detailed peer reviewed studies necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of them, but in your experience, working with a variety of different people from the general population who engage in different activities, as well as athletes who engage in very different activities, And let's keep in mind the discussion we had earlier about dog breeds.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5265.648

They are selected for not just based on physical phenotype and movement, but also personality type, temperament. What sort of broad correlations have you observed in, say, endurance runners Do they have more mental endurance for other activities versus, say, strength athletes or sprinters? Do they tend to have less but tend to excel in other domains of their mental life?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

535.179

Sure. So when you say genetics loads the gun, what comes to mind, because it's my experience, is that I have a right shoulder that sits a little bit lower than my left shoulder, unless I'm mindful of that. My dad has the same thing. And I can put an ankle on my other knee a bit more easily on one side versus the other. I tend to pronate one foot a little bit more than the other when I run.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5375.3

I find that really interesting. And I can think of a number of self-experiments that I'd like to embark on, including more endurance training at particular times of year and seeing how that correlates with mental focus and endurance for athletes. say, writing or preparing podcasts, things of that sort.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5396.696

But of course, now that I have some sense of what the answer could be, I'd be biasing the outcomes. But if it's a self-experiment and the goal is simply to shift one's mental life or behavior, then I don't know that it matters that much.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5561.372

Do you think that if somebody has pain, that they should have the capacity both to like lean into and push into the pain, not exacerbate it, but to sit with it and feel it as opposed to just avoiding it. How should people think about their own pain and how to work with it? That's the reason I'm asking.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

564.044

These are subtle things. They don't necessarily result in back pain. But I'm guessing that a lot of that is... either developmental overuse, particular sport, I'm regular footed, I skateboarded a bunch, so I push with my right foot, I kick a soccer ball with my right foot, those sorts of things. But let's assume that genetics played some role, created some bias.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5738.08

Give that person the treadmill.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5786.956

Yeah, that answers the question. It's follow the advice of the clinician. It gets back to this issue of predisposition to move a certain way, to therefore avoid other forms of movement, to engage in certain activities but not other activities.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5805.806

I realize that I'll get in trouble if I say, you know, 70% of the training that we do should be in line with our predisposition and 30% should be countercurrent to that. But I'm kind of veering towards numbers more or less like that, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5819.297

I mean, we know, for instance, in the machine learning algorithms that relate to learning in the nervous system that a rough – this is a rough estimate of difficulty should be about – 15% of questions or challenges, so these could be cognitive challenges or physical challenges, should lead to failures, non-injurious failures.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

5842.218

Getting the answer wrong about 15% of the time tends to optimize learning across a number of different domains. Okay. Is that true for everything? Is it true for language, math, dance? No, but it's true for a lot of things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

586.567

If I were to tell you that, which I just did, would then you immediately think to a particular intervention if I told you, okay, you know, I have a little bit of lower right side pain, which I occasionally do. I know I've got this imbalance that was loaded by genetics and presumably experience as well. And would your mind immediately go to a particular intervention origin of that pain?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6044.199

Yeah, you're in great shape at 67. Yeah. Just remarkable shape. For those listening and not watching, I encourage you to take a look at the top card of the YouTube video. I mean, Stu moves around great. I mean, well, your posture is great and you're in awesome shape for any age, much less 67. So that's a testament to your methods. Well, the point was, it's okay to push when you're younger.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6084.273

I'd like to ask you about... McGill's big three. I know that again, you loathe to impart generalizations on people, but at some point you realize that people need something to do to work with in order to try and quote unquote, pain proof their back or reinforce their back. So we did a video that included the big three.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6108.664

We'll provide a link to those in the show note captions where I perform the big three, probably not perfectly, admittedly. I should have invited you to critique my form and we can always shoot another one of those, but I think it captures the big three well enough. The bird, dog, the roll up and the side plank.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6130.472

designed to build strength and stability around the spine and to stave off back pain, or in some cases, rehabilitate back pain. An enormous number of people wrote to us and commented how much the big three have helped them. So I just want to make sure that it's clear that despite

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

614.596

Or perhaps even more importantly, a particular remedy to that pain? Or do we need to drill a little bit deeper and really understand more about what I do, what I don't do, if I'm more thin set or heavily set at the level of bone structure? You know, what are some of the other questions one would ask in the investigate category?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6149.887

The fact that you are appropriately reluctant to say that the big three is the solution to everything in terms of back pain for everyone, they have helped a large, large number of people avoid and in some cases rehabilitate back pain. If you were to add a fourth exercise to the big three, what would it be?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6173.907

Let's say somebody has a willowy spine and they want more spine stability. They want to be able to generate more spine rigidity for whatever purpose.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6185.555

They have a lower back pain that's unilateral. And when they sit too long and then stand up, it feels like that side is locked up and there's some pain shooting down the leg.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

62.38

But as Dr. McGill spells out very clearly, there are things that anyone and everyone can do in order to strengthen their back and to reduce the amount of pain they may be experiencing. He explained some specific ways to self-diagnose your back pain, which of course is critical for understanding what specific things to do as well as to avoid in dealing with any pain and,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6220.643

And when they walk a bit, 10, 15 minutes, they tend to feel better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6398.155

What are your thoughts on inversion tables and anti-gravity boots and things to deload the spine?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6491.698

The difficult ones. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6497.3

Well, I started doing the big three on the basis of your book. And it certainly has helped my lower right side back pain that occasionally flares up. I also noticed I've gotten stronger in various lifts, but the most salient consequence has been when I run, I feel like my torso can stay more upright as I can kind of cycle my legs underneath me like I'm pedaling on a bike.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6526.853

And I feel like I have endurance for days.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6563.583

I do. Yeah. I had a whole body scan for just, you know, for fun, I guess is the sort of thing I do for fun. And indeed there's a, I think it's like an L3, L4 bulge on one side, which is fully consistent with the pattern of pain that I've had. Right. And I've managed to avoid for a number of years now doing Cobra type pose, these kinds of things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6586.531

The Cobra doesn't work for everybody, but it is a powerful thing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6604.244

I noticed if I travel and it forces me to sit for long periods of time and then the next day I train with any kind of hip hinge movement, it flares up again.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6616.481

Don't forget to use your lumbare on the airplane. Right, yes. Dr. McGill gave me this little pillow called lumbare that inflates you putting in lower back and it's a wonderful tool. Right. That gives you resilience for travel. If one didn't have access to that, they could just roll up a towel and put in their lower back. Absolutely. Yeah, or sitting in a lecture.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6649.878

You might get some funny looks, but you'll be the person still mobile and not complaining about your pain when everyone else is grunting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6661.583

That's an advanced neuroplasticity trick that comes with age. I'm right there with you. I have a question about walking. These days, we're hearing more and more about benefits of walking after meals, walking several times per day, blood sugar regulation. I think it's all wonderful. Anything that gets people moving in healthy ways, I think is terrific.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6684.499

When it comes to walking, none of us want to be the person paying careful attention to our gait, especially when we're not in pain and things of that sort. But if you were going to recommend a daily walk, is there a duration and speed that you think could be beneficial in terms of staving off back pain, just general posture, things of that sort?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6706.822

Are we talking about a brisk five-minute walk or a brisk 20-minute walk, this kind of thing?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6932.34

If ever there were two exercises that bring to mind notions of back strengthening and potentially back pain... It's the deadlift and the squat. What are your thoughts on deadlifts and squats as a function of one's age, one's perhaps phenotype, ecto, endo, or mesomorph, or any other factors that would lead you to say, yes, deadlift and or squat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

6965.151

No, don't deadlift and or squat, or maybe you should deadlift and or squat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7349.959

Yeah, that's something that I both encourage and discourage people from searching for because it can scare you appropriately, but it also can be traumatizing to see.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

750.66

He's a willowy bendy guy who can just keep bending up and down off the ground. Bingo.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7505.49

What are your thoughts on glute ham raises? I'm a big fan of Nordic curls and glute ham raises for the posterior chain. To me, a glute ham raise, folks can look it up, is basically a deadlift into a leg curl, into a hamstring leg curl, except that your feet are, instead of being on the floor for the deadlift part, you've rotated yourself 90 degrees.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7528.36

so that the feet are effectively at the wall, right? And from the bottom position up to the parallel to floor position, that's more or less a deadlift, right? Stiff-legged or partially stiff-legged deadlift. And then the rest of the way is the Nordic curl or the leg curl.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7542.843

To me, that seems like almost the perfect exercise for the posterior chain, hamstrings, and glutes, which is why I do them regularly. What are your thoughts about them for back strengthening and for people that are trying to avoid back pain, both in the present and in the future?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7633.206

Because they can't generate that kind of twist and snap with the throwing a football, for instance, like the stiffening up of the body at precisely the right moment and the relaxing of the arm. It's a pulsing strength. The flicking and spiral.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

773.016

There's a very mundane example for you. Could I ask you a question about the willow versus thicker trunk example? Can we look to torso thickness or wrist thickness or ankle circumference as a way to assess ourselves as to whether or not we are likely to be more willowy or redwood-like. I mean, it should be obvious just by looking at ourselves, knowing ourselves.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7746.273

I mean, some of those guys back when were known for having a few alcohol drinks plus smoking cigarettes on the course.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7830.313

Well, that's okay. I mean, I've gone on record saying that I'll do and... genuinely do heavy hack squats, hack machine squats, leg extensions, those kinds of things, alternatives that for me have just led to progressively more of what I'm looking for in training legs. And back, of course, lower back. And I do the glute ham raises. And I can do all of those without pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7856.081

I don't know the last time I ever did a deadlift. I was never particularly strong in the deadlift. But if you're telling me that avoiding deadlifts as I get older, heavy deadlifts, that is, is going to help me avoid pain. back and hip pain, then I'm all for avoiding heavy deadlifts.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7927.944

Do you see how- Do I need to flare my elbows back? You can do, yeah. Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

7938.906

Right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

805.42

But for instance, I have a short torso. I'm kind of thick through the torso front to back. I always have been since I was a kid. And my wrist circumference isn't small, but isn't huge. I had a bulldog mastiff and he would often look at me and I knew in his mind he was thinking My wrists are really thick compared to yours, Andrew. I knew that's what he was thinking.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

82.913

as it relates to applying in sport and in everyday life. Dr. McGill and I also discuss several of the avid controversies within the field of back pain and the treatments for back pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

8205.817

You've talked about the so-called biblical training week. I love this. It's something that I plan to adopt for myself. It's not too far off from what I do now, but it's distinctly different enough that I'm excited because it's going to require some psychological adaptation, physical adaptation. Tell me, what is the biblical training week and why is it so useful?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

827.923

He had forearms like a longshoreman. And of course, he had never done any work whatsoever. Actually, primary goal of the bulldog is to do as little work as possible in life. But I have friends who have thick knees, some have smaller joints, smaller ankles. Can we make some general assessment about our spine without imaging it by looking at some of these peripheral markers?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

8604.046

Is there anything that can be done to offset the shrinking? Not that I know of. People will ask whether or not hanging or anti-gravity boots. Oh, well, I've measured that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

8654.347

I feel like every tissue in the body has been the target of an attempt to either restore its more youthful state or somehow augment its, I don't know, resilience over time.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

8671.905

So these days we hear a lot about FDA-approved treatments using so-called platelet-rich plasma, PRP injected into the knee or PRP injected into an ovary or PRP injected into whatever tissue it is that people are attempting to restore youthful state to. Is there any evidence for any compounds or injectable drugs that can restore the tensile strength and thickness to the discs?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

8873.798

Yeah. Could you walk us through... your biblical week training with some examples of what one could select from the buffet of training options.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

904.697

And of course, the discs are in repeating fashion throughout the spine, top to bottom. Correct. And the discs are the soft tissue that allow for mobility of the

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

916.573

vertebrae the uh the bony segments exactly they are the joints but they're not a ball and socket joint they're actually a fabric of layer upon layer of collagen fibers and we can talk about that as well what a beautiful adaptation right take a bunch of bony if you want to be able to bend a bone right you need to um break it up into segments kind of like beads on a necklace and um and then in between those beads you put some pliable yet um uh it could like

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

92.821

We talk about the so-called biopsychosocial model of pain, which points to the various sources that pain can arise from, everything from emotional to lack of sleep, to specific locations in the spine and brain and elsewhere in the body, and the ways those mesh together to give us what we call pain, as well as to direct us towards specific treatments for pain that tend to be especially effective.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9221.69

I appreciate the neck work that you do, though. I have a four-way neck machine, but I don't require one. I've actually found that taking a plate and wrapping it in a towel, lying on one side, making sure to hook my foot under the wrench and stabilize with my other hand on the ground. and then just gently doing repetitions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9240.637

Jeff Cavaliere from AthleanX has a great set of videos on this, where he really spells out the dangers of things like neck bridges. They can be done, but there's a risk there that probably outweighs the potential benefits for most people. But every once in a while, I can't help myself and I do some bridges.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9266.538

Yeah, I get teased for saying this too often, but the value of having a strong neck is just hard to overstate. You don't have to have a big neck, but a strong neck for sake of stabilizing the whole shoulder girdle during pressing and pulling lifts, for posture, for, you know, Feeling like your head is stably placed on your body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9307.812

My bulldog was alive. He had the larger neck in the house. But again, it's not about building size into the neck. It's really that strength and stability that I just think translates to so many things that are valuable.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9368.494

Yeah, this is interesting. I love older exercise books. And recently I came across one called Heavy Hands. This must be from the 70s. And the entire book was centered around people I'm being encouraged to carry some dumbbells during exercise, not all the time, and doing some lunges or walking uphill and getting the weights out from their body. And I was kind of chuckling about it on the one hand.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9394.329

pun intended. But at the same time, you know, we know based on a number of really good studies using neuroimaging and functional scoring of neural system function as one ages, that the innervation of some of the distal muscles and the fine control of the

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9412.944

the digits, the fingers and toes and toe spreading and things like that, even calf size and atrophy are fairly reliable markers of the extent to which there's been degeneration of the upper motor neuron pathways, other brain areas or not. So the idea of keeping the nervous system and neuromuscular

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9438.973

connectivity youthful by, quote unquote, heavy hands or maybe ankle weights, provided they're not going to induce injury, makes a lot of sense. Weighting the most distal portion of our body in order to generate adaptations, I think is going to be something that returns to the kind of modern sphere of fitness and longevity.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

946.601

I guess, a tissue that you can still compress. So it's both pliable and it can squeeze down and become more narrow in the vertical direction. And it can also squeeze down on one side or the other to some degree.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9600.406

And none of these things require fancy equipment. One could imagine just... grabbing a hold of some other... Well, an iron bar. An iron bar. Yeah. I really think there's something to this loading of the distal limbs cautiously, right? Properly. But there's something there in terms of keeping the neural pathways healthy and alive. Because we know they atrophy with age.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9624.025

And that explains in part the calf muscle atrophy, which, as you point out, is a well-known clinical marker for for neurodegeneration.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9661.707

Well, certainly when I resistance train, if I'm doing anything standing, I make it a point to stagger my stance. Yes. And at the same time to make sure that my belly button is pointing forward so that I generate some anti-rotation energy. effort so that most of my abdominal work can be placed within the workout for other things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9683.732

I do some pikes and some direct abdominal work as well and the roll up and things of that sort that you've recommended. But I find that from a coordination standpoint and especially from a balancing the musculature and the strength on both sides of the body, this is extremely important.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9702.149

And I know this because after years of skateboarding where you push with one leg, that was when I was younger, boxing where I'm traditional stance as opposed to southpaw, You know, you start getting into all these imbalances that goes way beyond anything aesthetic.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9717.958

I mean, the aesthetic stuff is my concern in certain people, but it was more the feeling that I could turn to my right very easily without pain turning my left. I felt stiff and it was just an imbalance in some of the muscles controlling me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9731.131

So I think that weaving a symmetric stance, weaving the requirement for symmetric balancing of the musculature on both sides of the midline just makes all the sense in the world to me, especially if one is going to be a regular exerciser, which hopefully people are.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9757.014

Yeah, let's talk about those because you talked about the strength days. What about the two days of mobility?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9796.207

If you could just repeat the cardiovascular days.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9946.093

I have a feeling I'm naturally inclined to do endurance work because once I start running distance, I can just run and run. And then eventually it just feels like the stopping comes from

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9959.261

you know, I don't know, some nagging little injury or something like that, or pain, as opposed to anything stopping me from continuing to run, which is unfortunate because I tend to like the shorter workout type stuff. But it brings us back to what we were talking about earlier, trying to do a balance of those. everything in between. I love the biblical training week.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Stuart McGill: Build a Strong, Pain-Proof Back

9979.695

And given that currently I've been doing three days of resistance training total per week and three days of cardiovascular training, all it requires is shifting one each of those days toward mobility training, still taking the full day off each week.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Ari Wallach. Ari Wallach is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

109.213

So by the end of today's episode, you will have a unique perspective on how your brain works, how you frame time perception, and indeed how you frame your entire life. Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1156.869

I love this concept of empathy for self because I've heard it before in other contexts, but I haven't heard it operationalized the way that you describe it. I think, yeah, there's two phrases that come to mind. There's a book called A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan. And it's a pretty interesting account of all the different forms of martial arts and fighting.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1181.339

And there's an interesting part of the book where he says, you know, you can't have your 20th birthday until you're 19, which is a big giant duh. But it's actually a pretty profound statement. And by the way, he went to Harvard. He's a smart kid. His father was in the SEAL teams. He has an interesting lineage in his own right.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1198.612

And I think at Harvard, he claims he just painted and smoked cigarettes. So, you know, it's a bit of an iconoclast. In any case, I think that statement, you can't have your 20th birthday until you're 19, is something that we forget because of the immense amount of attention that we pay to trying to be like others and satisfy external metrics.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1221.381

And so I like to think he was in agreement with you, if I may. The other thing that happened to me recently that comes to mind is that I, like many people, peruse Instagram. I teach on Instagram, et cetera. And there are a lot of these quote accounts, like life inspiration accounts. And I would argue that the half-life of any one of those posts is pretty short. But some are pretty interesting.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1246.231

And there's a guy, I'll put it in the show note captions. I don't remember off the top of my head. Not a huge account, not a small account. I think he lives in Austin. And He goes through this long discourse about the challenges of the human mind for a lot of the reasons that we're talking about, its ability to flip from past to present to future, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

126.189

to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1266.383

But then he says, it basically distills down to one actionable step per day or per morning, which is at some point, if you want to grow and be more functional, you have to ask yourself, what am I going to do today to make my day better? Not to be better than I was yesterday, right?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1289.049

Which is also a fine statement, but that one never really resonated for me because like yesterday could have been an amazing day. You might not be as good as yesterday, right? Every day is kind of its own unique unit. And our biology really does function on these circadian biology units of 24 hours. There's no negotiating that.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1305.014

So I like this concept of what can I do today to make my life and hopefully the lives of others better? Because it implies a verb, an action step, and it's really focused on the unit of the day, which is really what we've got. So that resonated. So according to your definition, empathy for self starts with understanding that we're always doing the best we can with what we've got.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1325.879

but that there's a striving kind of woven into that statement, that there is a need for striving. At what point do we start to develop empathy for others? And what does that look like? Like, is empathy for somebody else feeling what they feel? I mean, that's the kind of traditional definition.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1423.858

I agree completely. If we were to break that down...

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1429.143

into the requirements for empathy and connection uh one it seems like presence like we need to be present like we're going to appreciate a fern a beautiful fern or a dog or a significant other or another human being that we happen to encounter we have to be present we can't if we're going to have empathy we our mind can't be someplace else can't be wandering right can't be in the past can't be in the future or we're not going to be

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

145.168

That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste incredible. My favorite bar is the cake flavored one. But then again, I also like the chocolate flavored one and I like the berry flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all incredibly delicious.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1455.859

able to really touch into the details of the experience. So that seems like requirement number one. The second is that we need to be able to leave whatever kind of pressures are on us to tend to other things, right? Like every neural circuit we know has a push and a pull. Like in order to get A, you need to suppress B. And this is the way neural circuits work generally.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1479.633

Flexors and extensors in the muscles are a good analogy for which by the way, you know, like if you're going to flex your bicep, your tricep is essentially relaxing and vice versa in so many, so many words. The PTs are going to dive all over me for that one. But that's sort of how neural circuits in the brain work.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1497.83

We can actually see all around us by virtue of neurons that respond to either increments and decrements in light. And their difference is actually what allows us to see boundaries, borders visually. So we need to suppress like our thoughts about where we need to be that day or other things that are going on for us.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1514.403

And then we need to be able to return to our own, you know, self-attention in order to be functional. And I think that, I think this is where the challenge is and where the next question arises, which is on the one hand, I could imagine that, okay, we've got so many pressures upon us every day, all day.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1535.467

that it's getting much harder to be present, to be empathic, and to build this idealized future or better future. But on the other hand, I hear you and other people saying, well, things are so much better than they were even 50 years ago in terms of health outcomes, believe it or not, in terms of status of people having shelter, et cetera. And this is a shock to a lot of people.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1558.9

They're like, wait a second, I didn't see homeless people on the street when I was a kid, and now I do. Well, they were people suffering... were elsewhere. You didn't perhaps didn't see them.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1568.413

So there are a couple of levels of question here, but the first one is perhaps are we much better off, but we are worse off in the sense that there's so much incoming that we miss the fact that we're better off.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1584.806

Like, you know, is it like notifications preventing us from seeing that we actually have so much that we're, we're, we're, you know, a hundred times better than off than we were as a species 50 years ago.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1595.009

Because I feel like a lot of the debates that I see online about climate change, about health, about longevity, it's overwhelming because I feel like people aren't agreeing on the first principles. So let's start with this. Are human beings better off in terms of health and longevity than we were, let's go short scale, 50 years ago?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

1629.2

I mean, according to what metrics, like happiness?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

165.442

Now for me personally, I try to get most of my calories from whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Not this media company. Not this media company. I'm just saying. I'm not kidding.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And with David, I'm able to get 28 grams of high quality protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And it allows me to do so without taking on an excess of calories. As I mentioned before, they are incredibly delicious. In fact, they're surprisingly delicious. Even the consistency is great.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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No, I love this idea. I mean, we could map it to neural circuits, but I love this idea of high-level concepts and then neural circuits that are very – what Dr. Paul Conti was on this podcast – psychiatrist, brilliant psychiatrist said, you know, the limbic system, the emotional system doesn't know or care about the clock or the calendar. It just elicits feeling.

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It doesn't care about whether or not that feeling is relevant to the past, the present, or the future. It just has a job, which is just to bring out a particular feeling.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Shelter, health care.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But the general public tends not to, sorry, I keep interrupting you, but also it's what does the kid say? Sorry, not sorry. In the sense that I want to make sure that I highlight something.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Martha Beck is somebody who I think has done some really brilliant work creating practices where when one is not feeling what they want to feel, you know, there's this kind of question, like, are you supposed to feel your feelings? Are you supposed to create new feelings in place of them, especially if they're unpleasant? And it's like, there's no clear answer to that because it's complicated.

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infinite number of variables. But she does have this interesting practice whereby it's a bit like a meditation where if you're struggling with something, like maybe you're struggling with boredom or not knowing where to go with your life, or you're not happy, or you just feel some underlying

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's more like a cookie consistency, kind of a chewy cookie consistency, which is unlike other bars, which I tend to kind of saturate on. I was never a big fan of bars until I discovered David Bars. If you give them a try, you'll know what I mean. So if you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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to think back to a time when you felt particularly blank, like a time when you felt particularly empowered or particularly curious. It can be very specific, particularly amused because, and the idea is that in anchoring to the emotion state first, you call to mind a bunch of potential action steps.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And the reason I like this approach is that that is at least one way that, quote unquote, the brain works, which is that the emotion states are linked to a bunch of action step possibilities, kind of like a magic library where if you go into the room called sadness, there are a bunch of action steps associated with that go beyond crying. It's like curling up in the fetal position, et cetera.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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You go into the room that's called you know, excitement, and there's all this idea about getting in vehicles and going places and things of that sort. So what you're talking about is, I believe, thinking about the emotional states of others, and then from there, I think this is where you're going to go,

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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cultivating some action steps that you can take to ensure that that future generation can access those emotions yes but with a slight correction because it's not about thinking about their future emotional states it's actually feeling them i see so it's not saying i want my kids to be happy i want them to feel i want them to have no trauma it's um

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's feeling what it would be to be happy, no trauma.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Right.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Quasi-long-term. Six months. What I've learned in life is it's important to define the relationship.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. I really like this because it gets to so many themes that have been discussed on this podcast previously and that exist in the neuroscience literature. Yes, emotions don't know the clock or the calendar.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And that sounds like a bad thing. And oftentimes it's discussed as a bad thing. Like, oh, when you're feeling stressed, you're not able to access the parts of your brain that can make better decisions. We know that's true, except in light of what's immediately pressing. I mean, I would say that stress in the short term makes us much better thinkers and movers for sake of survival.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night. We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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In the long term, it's problematic. But the way that you're describing emotions as a Kedge anchor, is that what it's called? Kedge with a K? Kedge anchor, interesting. As a Kedge anchor, to pull us forward, also leverages the fact that emotions don't know about the clock or the calendar. And that the order of operations here seems to be emotions first,

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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then action steps born out of those emotions, and then future state hopefully arrived at if it's set along the right path. I like that a lot. And again, it maps to some of the work that has largely existed, at least to my knowledge, in popular psychology or whatever you want to call it, self-help.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Again, I'm a big Martha Beck fan in part because of an exercise that she's included in, I think, several, if not all of her books of this perfect day exercise. Have you ever done this exercise? It's a very interesting exercise. You first sit with your eyes closed.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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and you imagine like really terrible stuff and you experience it in your body and you experience it in your mind and you just pay attention to how it feels and it sucks. It doesn't feel good. Most people don't have too much trouble doing that exercise. Then you shift over. I think you're supposed to take a little break or maybe move around a little bit.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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He is also the host of a new TV series, A Brief History of the Future. Today's discussion focuses on perhaps one of the most important questions that any and all of us have to ask ourselves at some point, which is how is it that we are preparing this planet for the future? Not just for our children, if we happen to have children or want children, but for all people.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And then you do a perfect day exercise where no rules. You lie down or sit down, close your eyes and You can imagine your day includes anything you want. You can be anywhere you want. The room can morph from one country to the next. It doesn't matter. And you also experience the sensations in your body. And in that second exercise, it's remarkable. I've done it several times now.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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There are little seeds of things kind of pop out where you go, Oh, like I didn't realize that would be part of my perfect day. And they're not, um, outside the bounds of reality. And those are things that then you write down and that at least in my life have, um, all borne out. So this is something, an exercise you do routinely.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And when I first heard about this, I was like, okay, this seems like, like weird self-hypnosis, self-helpy woo stuff. Like, I'm not like, come on. I'm like, I'm a, At that time, I'm like, I'm a neuroscience professor. Like, I'm not going to like, you got to be kidding me. And it's a remarkable exercise.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And the reason I bring it up now in discussion with you is I think you and Martha arrived at a similar place or a similar avenue. But in your case, you're talking about specifically toward building a future that's not necessarily for you to live in, but for someone else to live in.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions. Maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I love it, and I love the notion of cathedral thinking, just the visual there, or mosque thinking. I went to the Blue Mosque years ago. Yeah. I mean, I've seen some amazing architecture. I love architecture. And I was like, okay, it'll be a beautiful building. And I was like, whoa.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years. And the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I think what I realize is that I don't know who built the Blue Mosque specifically. I don't know who the architect was. I should. And even earlier this year, we were in Sydney. I went to Sydney Opera House. We did a live there. It's a beautiful building. I learned they had been built over a very long period of time. I can tell you that the architect was Danish, but I can't remember his name.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So part of what we're talking about here is giving up our need for attribution, giving up our need for credit. Gosh, this is the opposite of social media, right? Social media, it's all about getting credit, you know? And yet in science where people care a lot about credit while they're alive, and my scientist colleagues hate this, but they know it deeply too.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Right, which is that with the exception of Einstein and a few others, most people will not be associated with their incredible discoveries, even the textbook discoveries 20 years out. And I know this because my dad's a scientist and I know a lot about the scientists that were ahead of him. And he taught me this early on.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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He just said, you know, with rare exception, you know, the discoveries are not, um, you know, no one's going to say, oh, that's the discovery of so-and-so. Talk about the discovery, people will build on it. So you're part of a process for which you won't get credit in the long run. You will get credit in the short run.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And that brings me around to perhaps a point that's more relevant to everybody, not just scientists, which is that We are all trained to work on these short-term contingencies, reward schedules, where we achieve something, we get credit. You get an A, you get a B, you get a trophy. We just came from the Olympic track and field trials in Oregon. It's like podium, bronze, silver, gold.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And so, yes, you're part of a larger legacy. You're building toward a larger legacy in the examples that you give. But part of it is understanding that you're not going to get credit. You're not going to have your name huge on the side of the building. I mean, I don't want to give too many examples, but I work at a university for which there's an endowment the size of a country, right?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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We're very blessed to have that endowment. the buildings have names on the side of them. The reason they have names on the side of them is because people gave money, typically gave money to the university to have their name on the side of a building to be immortalized. What's interesting for many reasons, both sociopolitical, but also other reasons, those names change over time.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So if people knew that they gave half their wealth and their name might be scraped off a building in 200 years. They might feel differently about it. So short-term contingencies are important. Then again, we call it Rockefeller Plaza, right? Is Lincoln Center named after a Lincoln?

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You're the New Yorker, you know, and so on and so forth. So like if people, how do we get the everyday person And I consider myself an everyday person. How do we get ourselves working on short-term contingencies for a future that we can visualize as better for the next generation and let go of our need for credit.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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You went to Berkeley. I went to Berkeley. You went to a bunch of places, but he bounced around, folks. Proof that you can bounce around and still be successful, but maybe you should eventually finish. We'll talk about that later. But Sproul Plaza. Yes, yes. Sproul Plaza, seat of the free speech movement. Although now you could argue, not so free speech movement. That's my, I said that.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yes, I said that. Sproul Plaza, like, I can't tell you who Sproul was. Do you know who Sproul was? No. Exactly. I can tell you the Arches. I can tell you that it was a free speech movement. I can tell you that I saw certain bands play there. I can tell you that it's supposed to be a place where you can say anything and be exempt from, you know,

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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That's a scary.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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This is an exciting thought.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yeah, no, please do that. Please do so.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Philanthropy at universities and elsewhere. People think of it as like, oh, people, egoic legacy. Sure. Also pays for hundreds of thousands of scholarships, the opportunity for people to- And research, and you need to do it 100%. It's vital. It's vital.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly from moment to moment. Roka understands all of that and has designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I totally agree. And I think, you know, I'm old enough. And frankly, I'm excited to be old enough that I can make statements about being old enough to know that, like, I believe that our species is, for the most part, benevolent. I feel like most people, if raised in a low trauma environment, with adequate resources will behave really well. There are exceptions and

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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there may be sociopaths that are born with really disrupted neural circuitry that they just have to do evil or feel, you know, but I think it's clear that trauma and challenge can rewire behavior and certainly the brain to create, you know, what we see as evil, right? So, but I think most people are good. Most people are of genuine goodness. And I do think that we model behavior.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I think that etiquette, is something that I guess as a 49 year old person, I guess, does that make me middle age? I'm of middle age. I'll probably live hopefully to be about a hundred, but we'll see. Bullet bus or cancer, I'm going to give it what I got.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Right. There's a response to that that could go either way. I like to think that reading the book fully will extend life as opposed to shorten life. Yes. If nothing else, maybe it'll cure insomnia. The idea here is that if we're going to invest in being our best selves, one would hope that other people will respond to that the way that you said, that we'll kind of mirror each other.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were first designed for use in sport, in particular for things like running and cycling. And as a consequence, Roka frames are extremely lightweight, so much so that most of the time you don't even remember that you're wearing them. And they're also designed so that they don't slip off, even if you get sweaty.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Good behavior breeds good behavior. In my lifetime, I've seen a real increase in the number of rules and regulations and a decrease in etiquette. Like what I would call, and I don't, this isn't a real term, I don't think, but like spontaneous etiquette or genuine etiquette, like people being kind just to be kind, not because they're afraid of a consequence.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I have a theory, and I'll go through this quickly. I saw a documentary recently about the history of game shows. Mm-hmm. where I learned that the first commercial was during the World Series when DiMaggio was making a run on the home run record. So they used a sports game that was televised and on the radio to have a first commercial.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Then they had game shows, which were basically commercials for the products. That's what they were. And they used human interaction as a way to make it more interesting between the contestants and the host. And then came reality TV shows. And then now I would argue that social media is the reality TV show and we're all able to opt in and cast ourselves in it.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And that the way that people get more, let's just say presence on the show is to do things that are more hyperbolic. Like it's very hard, I've tried and I think managed to some extent to do so too. It's very hard to create a very, very popular social media channel

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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in this reality TV show that we are all in on social media by just being super nice to everybody and being, you can, but it's much harder than if you're a high friction player because it's less interesting. There's less drama. It takes more attention. But I do think that there are pockets of that. So Lex Friedman used to talk about this. Like, is there a social media platform where people are

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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rewarded for being benevolent, for modeling good etiquette, because they genuinely like that. And I say social media because I think so much of life now is taking place there. And that's the opportunity to reach people across continents and far away in time as well, right? To timestamp down things. So here's my question. Is there a version of social media that

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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that is not just on the half-life of like 12 hours, what was tweeted, et cetera, what was retweeted. Because I would argue that even the highest virality social media posts have a half-life of about six months to a year. Maybe not even that. There are a few memes, like the guy looking at the other girl, walking the other way, those kinds of memes that seem to persist, but most of them don't.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Now, even though Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sport, they now have many different frames and styles, all of which can be used not just for sport, but also for wearing out to dinner, to work, essentially anytime in any setting.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So is there a time capsule sort of version of social media? Because I look on the internet, like on YouTube, and I would say there are probably three or four YouTube videos, namely the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford in 2015, maybe last lecture by Randy Pausch before he died of pancreatic cancer, maybe Benet Brown's Ted talk on vulnerability.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I'm thinking mainly in the self-help space, personal development space here. And frankly, Aside from that, most things, as popular as they may seem, 100 million views, 200 million views, compared to literature, compared to music, compared to poetry, compared to visual arts, it's going to be gone. I like to think that these podcast episodes are going to project forward 30, 40 years into the future.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But if we look at the history of what's on YouTube... and we look at the half-life of any social media post, it may not be the case. In fact, it's very likely it's not the case. One would hope that they morph into something that lasts. But the question here is, is there a version of social media that acts as a time capsule to teach the sorts of principles that you're talking about?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I wear Roka readers at night or Roka eyeglasses if I'm driving at night, and I wear Roka sunglasses in the middle of the day anytime it's too bright for me to see clearly. My eyes are somewhat sensitive, so I need that. I particularly like the Hunter 2.0 frames, which I have as eyeglasses and now as sunglasses too.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But at the advent as we – I guess it could be argued I've done a lot of things that my father did. He is a scientist and there are other domains of life, but yeah.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yeah, so I might tell you who'd say you'd open the paper and poke it from behind when I wanted his attention.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you'd like to try Roca, you can go to roca.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your purchase. Again, that's roca.com slash Huberman to get 20% off. And now for my discussion with Ari Wallach. Ari Wallach, welcome. Andrew Huberman, thank you for having me. You and I go way back.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. I mean, one of the reasons I fell in love with biology is that

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yes, we are evolving as a species, but I would argue slowly enough that any fundamental knowledge about biology of the human body is a core truth about us way back when and now and very likely into the future. And of course, technologies will modify that. Medicine will modify our biology, et cetera. But I get great peace from that.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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and most of the so-called protocols that I described on the podcast about viewing sunlight, et cetera, circadian rhythmicity, et cetera, has been core to our biology and our wellbeing 100,000 years ago, and very likely it will be core to our biology 100,000 years from now. I therefore worry about any technology that shortens up our ability time scale of motivation and reward.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I use social media, so I am not anti-social media by any stretch. In fact, I'm quite pro, provided it's kept in check, a la Jonathan Haidt's ideas. I really like those. let me put it this way. If I go to Las Vegas, which I do enjoy doing from time to time, I'm not a gambling addict.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I guess if I say that enough times, people are going to say I'm a gambling addict, but I enjoy playing a little bit of roulette or a little bit less slots. I play all the low level stuff that doesn't require any thinking. And I often do pretty well for whatever reason. Cause I know when to leave probably. But Vegas is all about short-term thinking and short-term reward contingency.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's actually designed in every respect to get you to forget that there are these other longer timescales.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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There's no lights. There's no clocks in many of them. The random intermittent reward schedule that's there is designed to keep you playing. And I would argue that a lot of social media is like that. Not all of it, but a lot of it is like that. likes and responses. In some cases, fighting is what people want. They want to fight because they like that emotion.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

379.158

And I think that's a good way to frame today's conversation, not by talking about our history by any stretch, but because... Really what I want to understand is about time and time perception. So without going into a long dialogue, the human brain is capable of this amazing thing of being able to think about the past, the present, or the future, or some combination of the three.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3807.604

The algorithms figure you out so that they shorten up your temporal window. And so when people say, oh, we're walking around with a little slot machine in our pocket all day long with our smartphone, I actually think that's right. I think it's right. It's more like a casino, however, where That casino harbors all sorts of different games and they're going to find the one that you like.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3828.194

Some people like playing roulette. I happen to like playing roulette. Some people like crap. Some people like poker. Some people like to bet on a game where you get to sit the whole game with the possibility of winning. A friend of mine who's actually an addiction counselor, he said, you know, the gambling addiction is the absolute worst of all the addictions. Why?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3844.164

Because the next time really could change everything. Unlike alcoholism or drug addiction or other forms of addiction, where the next time is just going to take you further down. In gambling, there is the realistic possibility that the next time could change everything. And that destroys lives.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3859.914

So if we are walking around with a sort of casino in our pocket, how do we get out of that mindset, much less use that tool? in order to get into these longer-term investments for the future? This is what I want to know. How do we get into the metaphorical cave painting scenario?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3877.803

Because what it means is that the stories that I'm seeing on social media today probably are meaningless toward my future. Probably. More than likely, yes. But I need to be informed. But, you know, I saw the debates. Like how much more do I need to hear about what was happening at the debates from other people? Probably zero. Like there's no new information there.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3899.453

The only thing that can happen is I can get caught in the little eddy of the tide pool that is the debate about the debate or the debate about the debate about the debate. So, I mean, it takes a strong, strong mind to – Divorce oneself from all of that, much less get into this longer-term thinking.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3921.917

And maybe this is why David Goggins is always out running and hates social media so much even though he's used it to good end to share his message. I mean what is it that we can do to disengage from that short-term contingency reward mindset? and behaviors and what in the world can we do instead? Is it go paint like on the side of a cave? Is it write a book? Is it, I mean, how do we do that?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3953.049

And then let's check off the box of like, we need to tend our kids. We need to tend our health. We need to get our sleep. We need to get, let's just assume that we're taking care of the fundamentals of health and wellbeing, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time afterwards anyway, what do we do? Where should the stories go? Where do we put them?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3974.342

I feel really impassioned by this because I devote my life to this, right? And I teach biology because I believe it's fundamental and transcends time. But I care about the future. And I'm well aware that in 30 years, The idea that there was a guy on the internet talking about the importance of getting morning sunlight. Sure, that might happen, you know, but probably no one will care.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

3999.486

Just like I realized about halfway through my scientific career that, sure, I was tenured at Stanford, won some awards, enjoyed the research, enjoyed the day-to-day. But I realized, okay, there's some – I feel good about the research contributions we made. But that I knew – that people weren't going to be like, oh, Huberman discovered this because I had already forgotten the people 32 years ahead.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4022.119

And I know the literature really well. So like, how do you square these different mental frames? It's a conundrum.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

404.506

If other animals and insects do that, I wouldn't be surprised, but we do that. And we do it pretty well, provided all our mental faculties are intact. One of the key aspects to brain function, however, is to use that ability to try and set goals, reach goals, and that's a neurochemical process.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4066.568

But I don't believe that. I mean, I believe in God. I mean, I've gone on record saying that before. And there are many people who believe in God in the afterlife. But it still is difficult to navigate the day to day.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4098.518

So science destroyed religion?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4149.573

What I'm saying is – You're not going to argue you can tell God what to tell us.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4157.002

But the term you just said, that science and technology cannot tell us where we need to go.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

425.441

And I would say these days, more than ever, we operate on short timeframe reward schedules, meaning we want something, we generally have ways of getting it pretty quickly, or at least the information about how we might get it pretty quickly, And we either get it or we don't. And of course it involves dopamine and a bunch of other things as well.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4301.522

But there are still many people on the planet who believe in God and are religious.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4306.565

More than there are that are religious. So does that mean that they're immune from this confusion?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4327.097

And I would say that for every major religion. Yes. I would say for every religion, like the essence of it is about love.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4344.865

Like with anything.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4385.001

That's reassuring. Yeah, we're in the- Because I keep hearing about, you know, the fact that we're almost done. So we're about a third of the way through. We're in the bottom of the third inning. Oh, goodness. All right, well, you finally said something that gives me, I'm just kidding. Lots of things that you've said give me confidence in our future.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4398.828

Most notably that you're talking about this, sorry to interrupt, but I'm going to compliment you. So maybe it's okay. I'll stop talking now. That most notably that, you know, I think you're the first person

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4412.635

outside of the sub-branch of neuroscience, which is a very small sub-branch, people that study time perception, to really call to people's consciousness that the human brain can expand or contract its time perception. And we do this all day long and high salience, high stress, high excitement, life and thinking shrinks the aperture, right?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4442.652

It contracts the aperture and makes us very good at dealing with things in the present, get to the next day or the next hour, collapse, go and continue, repeat, repeat, repeat. It's the opposite of what the Buddhists traditionally said, which was to be present in order to see The timelessness is why I'm a big fan of the I forget the name. It's Rob.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4464.155

We'll have to add this in the the Asatoma prayer, which talks about release me from the time bound nature of consciousness to timelessness. Sounds very mystical. But what they're really talking about is get me out of the mode of stress into the mode of relaxation that allows me to see how the now links with the past and relates to the future.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4482.614

impossible to do when we're under stress, trying to figure out like how we're going to get someplace in traffic to pick up the kids so they're not waiting outside the school alone. Impossible. You just can't, the two deep breaths and the long exhale, like it works to bring your level of autonomic arousal down, make you navigate that situation better.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4502.337

But it is the hyper rare individual who thinks, well, look, you know, this is linked to some larger timescale. Like when we are stressed, the horizon gets right up close. So you're one of the first people to talk about this dynamic relationship with that horizon. Is there a way that we can leverage the immediacy of our experience, that fact, to actually create useful tools for the future?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

451.059

A lot of your work is focused on linking our perception of what we're doing in the present with knowledge about the past and trying to project our current decision-making into the future to try and create a better future. And

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4532.137

So for instance, before we started recording, we were talking about the notion of time capsules. I've been keeping a time capsule for a long time. The first idea for this came when I was a kid. We used to build skateboard ramps in the backyard.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4542.025

And I'll never forget that right before we put down the first layer of plywood, we put a time capsule in there and we all like wrote little notes and did things. I think someone put some candy in there or something. It's kind of a cool concept, right? But, Social media to me does not seem like a time capsule. I feel like it's just going to get turned over, turned over, turned over.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4561.432

What are the real time capsules of human experience? So you said religion, religious doctrine, Bible, Koran, Torah being the big three. And there are others, of course. But those are the big three. Bible, Koran, Torah. Those are big three time capsules. Okay. Then we've got literature, music, poetry, visual art. So paintings, drawings, and sculpture. What else do we have?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

46.508

The human brain, as we know, is capable of orienting its thoughts and its memories to the past, to the present or to the future. But few people actually take the time to think about the future that they are creating on this planet and in culture, within our families, et cetera, for the next generation and generations that follow them.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4602.43

I've been to your home. Yeah, but, you know. It's been a while. It's been a while. That was a complaint.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4611.193

Whenever I make it to Manhattan, I have a hard time getting out of Manhattan.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

469.005

that's some pretty heavy mental gymnastics, especially when many, perhaps most, but certainly many, many people worldwide are just trying to get through their day without feeling overly anxious, without letting their health get out of control, without, or I should say their illness get out of control, and on and on.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4693.235

How far, so just a few questions more specifically about you, because I think what you're doing here is you're concretizing a process, a protocol, if you will, that anyone can use. And I would argue that the shift from printed photos, largely from printed photos to electronic photos has made this problematic, you know? Um, I mean, it's made certain things simpler.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4712.419

Like if you change relationships, you can just delete a folder as opposed to having to actually take photographs from a previous relationship and make sure they're not around in case your next relationship would understandably take issue with that. I'm not speaking from experience here. But how far back do your photos go?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4765.207

49. Thank you. But you seem to be in good health. Yes.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4771.953

Yeah. You have energy. You've always had a lot of energy. You used to call yourself Ari Ferrari. You said you're like a Ferrari. That's why the name is Ari.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4779.738

Ari and I have known each other since we were little kids. He's always had a ton of energy. Actually, he hurt himself when he was younger and he was in full traction, like cast of his whole lower body. And he would dance on the floor on his arms, kind of like David Goggins will treadmill on his hands, even when he can't move his legs. Okay, so chances are you'll meet your grandkids.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4799.49

Yeah, God willing, you'll meet your grandkids. But probably not your great-grandkids. Probably not. Okay, well, I have a different tool.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4879.184

Yeah, I get it. And it's interesting because I think that – well, and you're on the internet. So people will see you on the internet probably at least, you know, I think 30, 50 years out if you Google your name or whatever it's called at that point. Yeah. I get in trouble whenever I say Googling. People go, why don't you talk about a different – because that's the one everyone uses.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

488.288

So to kick the ball out, I've got this long-winded question, and it is indeed a question, which is how do we navigate this Like if we really care about the future, what do we want to do? Where do we want to place our mental frame? And how do we start going about doing that?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4900.501

Unless you use DuckDuckGo because you're afraid of what people might – so – when someone comes up with a bet, like a truly better one, maybe it'll get replaced. But meanwhile, Google, um, so they'll get to your great grandkids could possibly know you there. They could hear this conversation.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4915.882

This very conversation. I think that's part of the reason why people go on social media, not just to be consumers, but they want, they want to leave something. They're probably not thinking about it consciously, but they want to leave something for the future. I use a tool, um, that I learned from a friend. He has this, um, your life in, in, uh, it, your life in weeks, I think it's called.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4936.761

And it's this, you know, you fill in chart where you, you put your birthday, you put your predicted lifespan. So for me, I put a hundred, it feels good to me. I'm not interested in living much past a hundred unless there's some technology that would allow me to do that with a lot of vigor and my friends would be around. So, and you mark off the, the, that you fill in these little squares.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4955.265

And I did this morning actually. And, you know, I'm not quite halfway through, but I'm about halfway through. And it's a, it's an interesting thing to see your life in that representation. You go, oh, wow. It can inspire better decision-making because we can lose track of where we are in time. And some of us, including me, are not very good at tracking time.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

4975.124

People that have ever waited for me on an appointment know this. I track – I'm very oriented in space, not well-oriented in time. So the problem with these charts is that – or photos on the shelf, I would argue, is they have great utility. But the problem is that They're not in the forefront of our consciousness throughout the day, right? Like I filled out that chart.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5001.064

I didn't even think about it again until now. And when we are pressed with a decision, in some cases, we have the opportunity to step back and say, okay, look, in the bigger arc of things, I got to go left here, even though I want to go right. This is the right thing for my- The bigger arc. The bigger picture. The bigger picture. The long path, yes.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5018.138

So, you know, is there a way, is there maybe a technology that actually serves us to anchor us to best decision-making for a given best time bin, we would call it in neuroscience, best time binning, mode of time binning for a given decision.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5133.225

Yikes. I mean, and cool. Very cool.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5184.927

No, no, no.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5215.991

No, you need to floss at night.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5218.232

We did an episode on oral health. Yeah, I know. And I learned from the dentist.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5227.238

It's actually true. No, it's true. It's so key for brain and body health.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5231.239

The dentists are going to thank you.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5265.965

Yeah, I definitely want to touch on that. Can I just ask you a question real quickly before here?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5270.728

This notion of – let's say a protocol for imagining future self or actually visualizing future self, not as a way to scare yourself into better health habits, although if it works, great, but as a way to really get your mind into the reality that if you survive, you're going to get older by definition. And that person needs care and in an environment and your kids are going to grow up too.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5298.009

We know this. Okay. So that's all obvious. I feel like Barring accident or injury or disease, most people have a kind of intuitive sense of how long they're going to live. And the reason I say this is I remember when Steve Jobs was alive because I was a postdoc in Palo Alto then and would see him occasionally around Palo Alto. And then read the Walter Isaacson biography about him.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5323.949

And it seemed like he had a very clear sense that someday he would die. And he lived his life essentially according to that principle. And in some sense may have justified being a little bit outrageous at times and a little bit high friction at times through the sense of urgency.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5340.83

Like it was important to get things done and get them done right and to discard with a lot of kind of like popular convention. And he's kind of celebrated for it. I'm sure a few people dislike him. I think most people celebrate him for it. I guess he had some sense of how long he was going to live. And then at one point maybe that sense was inflated and then boom.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5359.435

Your dad died when you were very young. Do you think that that gave you a perspective that, you know, at any moment you could be four months out, you could get the four months notice that you're going to be dead in four months? Like, did it shape your thinking about the future?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5375.555

I mean, my dad's now – I'm not saying this as a – I mean, no, it's interesting that there may have been a distinct advantage, of course, not to his dying, of course, but to the idea that it really creates this sense of urgency about not just the present but the future. I remember when we were very young, you're like, I want to have kids.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5391.248

You got going on a family like I think first among all of us.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5394.791

Really early. And for those whose parents are still alive and seem to be vigorous, maybe they feel less of a sense of urgency. Which sounds wonderful. Parents are alive, vigorous. Okay, that's a blessing. But if it prevents you from living your life in a way that's really linked to your futures, that's not good.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5416.468

So do you think that we have an intuitive sense or an unconscious sense of how long we are likely to live, like a kind of a range? Because Steve kind of argued that in some of his writings and speaking.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5488.803

I could not agree more. And I'm so, so grateful that you mentioned this book and this idea from Becker, because I would argue that every addiction, every single addiction is is based in a fear of death and an attempt to shorten the timescale of thinking, shorten the timescale of reward, shorten the timescale of everything to avoid that reality.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5781.027

How do we do this? I mean, like we can do it conceptually. Like you want to set the stage for that. Whoever ends up in that empty frame to have a better life. But it's hard to do.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5794.356

Like I think most people assume once it's lights out, who knows what happens next, but it's very hard to get them working for something that they don't have the ability to imagine and the people that they don't even know. So in other words, if we have a hard enough time imagining ourselves in the future, you gave us a tool. Look at the aged version of yourself. I love that.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5812.825

And if there's a website that will do that, we can put a link to it in the show note captions. Put a reminder that you will get older. You are getting older in this very moment and try and live for the wellbeing of that person and the people around them and look at it. So that creates a protocol for the self

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5831.741

How do we protocol the future setting, the futures approach, the verbing of the future or into the future for people around us and for people that we don't even really know and that we probably will never even meet?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5870.119

You have a – Yeah, yeah.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5898.388

Yeah, I can't. I mean, maybe once or twice.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

5942.272

And what does the letter include?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

601.094

He calls me Andy, folks. Sorry, okay. No, it's okay. Just stick with Andy. I'm going to stick with Andy. I'm giving you permission for at least the duration of this episode.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6171.149

That that could actually be – Are those three still in touch or they've been canceled yet?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6190.721

Right, and the autobiographies are, of course, through their own lens. Through their own lens.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6258.825

Yeah. Or that we do need and it's just a shorter timescale reward thing. Like I don't believe that everything that happens on social media or that we buy or the pleasure that we get in our lifespan or day is bad. I don't think – I'm a capitalist too. What I think is that it's just one – it is but one time window of kind of operations. I just think it's good to have flexibility, right?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6282.204

It's sort of like in nutrition, they talk about metabolic flexibility.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6292.428

So I love it. And I also know that a lot of people love it, even if they don't know they love it, meaning they perhaps haven't heard it framed the way that you describe it in your book, on your show, and today. But I think a lot of people just are hoping that these super high achievers, right, the Steve Jobses, the Elons, the...

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6317.884

I don't know how people feel about politicians nowadays, but, you know, but the people building technologies who seem to really care about the future. I mean, say what you want about Elon, but the guy is building stuff for the now and for the future. I mean, he's doing it. That they will take care of it for next generations, right? Just like,

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6338.066

there were those, the Edison's and the Einstein's and the, you know, the, I don't, you have to be careful with names these days because almost everyone has something associated with them where you're going to trigger someone, but I'll just be, you know, um, relaxed about it and say like, I would even say like, uh,

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6354.582

You know, even like a Jane Goodall, like the appreciation of our relationship with animals and what they have to contribute to our own understanding of ourselves and our planet, that kind of thing. So, you know, those people ushered in the life that I've had and I feel blessed. pretty great about that.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6374.198

So many people are probably saying, okay, makes sense for my family, but what do I have to contribute? And you give the example of the fact that children are always observing, they carry forward the patterns and the traits, and certainly the responses that they observe in their parents, what's okay, what's not okay.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6395.772

Starting in the 80s and in the 90s in this country, there were many more divorces and fractured homes than there were previously. As a consequence, there's also been a fracturing of the kind of collective celebration of holidays. Like the things that have anchored us through time are happening less frequently now. Many of these have become commercialized, but that was always the case.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6420.423

You know, people were getting Christmas presents one way or another. So... You know, do you think that the kind of fracturing of the family unit has contributed to some of this lack of, of, um, let's just call it longer path, um, thinking and decision-making?

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6449.752

Okay, so you mentioned religion. Maybe for a moment we could just talk about universities. These days, in part because of the distrust of science, and in part because of distrust in government, and in part because of the distrust in traditional media, there's more and more ideas being kicked around that, you know, formal education is not as valuable as it used to be.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6473.291

And people always cite the examples of the Mark Zuckerbergs and others who didn't finish college, but I would argue they got in and chose to leave. They took leave of absence. They didn't drop out. And they are rare individuals. Ryan Holiday said it best.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6487.18

I think if you are struggling in college, you're absolutely the kind of person that needs to stay in college with rare exception, unless there's like a mental health issue or some physical health issue that needs to be tended to because nowhere else in life, except perhaps the military, is there such a clear designated set of steps that can take you from, you know, point A to point B with a credential that you can leverage in the real world for builds.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

6511.505

And I completely agree with that. But I would also argue that academic institutions and financial institutions have changed. Political institutions have changed and there's a deep distrust. So we are having a harder time relying on them to make good decisions. You saw a lot of presidents of university – major universities fired recently, including Stanford. There, I said it. It happened.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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but also Harvard and other places for different reasons. And fired might be not the correct term. They decided to resign. Whatever it was, they're no longer there. They have new ones in. And so there's a lot of distrust. So what can we rely on? Like if it's not, if people are having less faith in religion, less faith in academic institutions, less faith in, like what do we got?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Ari Wallach is an expert in this topic, and he has centered his work around what he calls long path labs, which is a focus on long-term thinking and coordinated behavior at the individual, organizational, and societal level in order to best ensure the thriving of our species. And while that may sound a bit aspirational, It is both aspirational and grounded in specific actions and logic.

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And it tells us a lot about – it's sort of like declaration of values. It's one thing to say – which is scary for a lot of people because it's one thing to say that doesn't work. That's no good. That's no good. It's easy to be a critic. What you're describing has incredible parallels to health.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Like when I started the podcast and even before when I was posting on social media, it was during the lockdowns. And it was like all this fear about everything. And I said, listen, like I can't solve this larger issue related to what may or may not be going on. But what's obvious? People are stressed. Stress is bad when it's chronic. People aren't sleeping.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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That's bad, especially when it's chronic. And I've got some potential solutions, some tools, some zero-cost tools. So a lot of the backbone of the Huberman Lab podcast is about the things you do more so than the things you don't do. So what you're describing is essentially a field that consists of like breaking things down, but isn't offering solutions. So it sounds very similar.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I think that people love potential solutions, even if one acknowledges, look, this might not solve every sleep issue, it very well could make, you know, positive ground towards some of it or make it 50% better or 20% better, in some cases, 100% better. And of course, there are those for whom the tools don't work, and they need to go through more to more extreme measures. But

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I hear you saying that religion provided the solutions, not just pointing to problems. People are not looking at that as much anymore. The big institutions like academic institutions, political institutions, let's face it, regardless of where one sits on one side of the aisle or the other, they're constantly fighting.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's like 12-hour news cycle designed to just point fingers so that nobody actually has to say what they really believe in a clear, tangible way. There are those that do that a bit more than others, but it's a mess. And then in terms of the family unit, this is what I was alluding to before.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I feel like family units and values and structures are becoming more rare, at least in the traditional view of the family. Two parents, kids, et cetera, which is by no means a requirement to call something a family.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So are you saying that we all have to look at it like it obviously starts with the individual, but that part of the work of being a human being now and going forward is to learn this futures approach?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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This is the baby. baby Bjorn thing?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yeah. If the brain had completed development internally, you'd have only stillborn. I mean, presumably there was a branch of our earlier version of species that... Many mothers and babies died in childbirth because of this. They were deselected. That's not the proper term.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Ding!

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But maybe it's also the propagation of story, as you said earlier, that can inform better decisions. So we need new stories. Wisdom is like spoken cave paintings basically.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Wait, are we so messed up? Because you said we're about a third of the way through. Things are better than ever.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Kids read that stuff now?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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how do we do it at scale? Because I think a lot of people listening to this will say, okay, that all sounds great.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Like I, for one say, you know, the shift from the notion of building a better future through self-sacrifice, rather you can make it almost like pro self and others endeavor, the way you've described it, empathy for self, empathy for others, getting some control over the, you know, contraction and dilation of your time window.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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making sure that you take good care of yourself, but you take care of the future generations as well, like for that empty frame, the now empty frame. And then moving from dystopia to protopia, that all sounds great. But I think a lot of people might think, okay, well, at best, I could do that for myself and the people that

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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that I know it's going to be hard to do that as a greater good for the greater good. And you could say, well, that does contribute to the greater good. This is actually very similar to what we tell graduate students when they get their first round of data. You go, okay, well, the data oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes you say, oh, the data are cool.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Like if it continues this way, that'd be an interesting story. And they get the sense and you already have the sense because you have the experience to know like the best case scenario is a nice solid paper that your three reviewers and maybe 20 other people will read. And you're going to spend the next five years of your life on this thing. Maybe three, but probably five years of your life.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And you'll get your PhD. And there's always this question, like, do you ditch that project and go for something else? Or do you stay with that project? In other words, what you're saying is you get to put your brick on the wall, but it's a brick. Whereas, you know, there are other projects and you go, whoa, like that's, you know, that's like one wing of the cathedral.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And, and it's a rare instance where that happens. And a lot of it's luck and it's doesn't always work out anyway. But yeah, You know, what we're saying here is, you know, how hard people are willing to work is often related to what they feel the potential payoff will be.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If they can sense the payoff, and by the way, I love the protocols that you offer, the empty frame, the journaling to future self, this notion of time capsuling your present thinking into the future. The aging of self, these are very actionable things. I plan to do them, and I think they're very valuable.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But if I understand correctly, you are interested in creating a movement of sorts where many, if not everybody, is thinking this way. Because the other model is, okay, well, the Elons will take care of it for us, or the Or the system is so broken like there's nothing I can do. I'm just trying to make ends meet.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So how does one create like a reward system or a social media platform or – how does one join up with other people who are trying to do this?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Thank you. There will be no bumper stickers.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yeah, we have one. We have a Huberman Lab AI. There you go. We haven't advertised it very heavily, but it's there. You can ask me questions. It's pretty good. It sounds a bit like me. The jokes are dry. They're dry. And not funny.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Well, amen to that. You know, they're, was a former guest on this podcast, uh, or there was a guest on this podcast previously, uh, Dr. Wendy Suzuki's professor at NYU. I think now she's the Dean of, of, um, arts and sciences, I think is the correct title.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And, you know, she's trying to bring some of her laboratories data on the value of even very brief meditations to stress management in college first to kind of, to help students manage the stress that is college and being in your early twenties. Um,

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But I think there's a larger theme there, which is to try and teach emotional development, to teach self-regulation, because many people don't get that. I mean, or they get it, but then there are big gaps. And I love the way that you're describing this. Basically, it's a lens, if I may, it's a lens into human experience that's very dynamic and is really in concert with the fact that

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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the human brain has the capacity for this dynamic representation of time, like focus on like solve for the now there will be parts of your day, no doubt today where you just have to solve for the now you're not thinking about the greater good.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I really appreciate your answer for a couple of reasons. Through the 90s and early 2000s, and maybe even until 2020, there was a growing movement within science, but also outside of science, towards encouraging people to be mindful, this whole notion of being present, right? But what you're describing is actually too much being present, what you're calling presentism.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Um, and then the ability to dilate your, your consciousness, um, in, in the temporal sense and, and to solve for things that are more longterm, make these investments towards the future. Um, I wonder though, you know, how can we incentivize people to be good, to do good, um, And how can we incentivize people to do this on a backdrop of a lot of short-term carrots and short-term horizons?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I think you've given us some answers, and they're very powerful ones, such as the aging self-image exercise, journaling into the future, writing to future self, the empty frame exercise, linking up with our ancestors and thinking about where we're at now and where we want to go. Is there anything else that... you want to add? Meaning, is there anything that we should all be doing?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Should we all be reading more biography? If I look back through history, it's both dark and light. Is there anything else that you really encourage people to do to be the best version of themselves for this life and the ones that come next?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So glad you're going to tell me it's not because then people can still watch Monday Night Football.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And of course, it depends on what's happening in the present. But in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, up to about 2020, so of course we're still in the 2000s, there was this notion of future tripping. Like people are future tripping. They're spending too much time worrying about the future, too much time worrying about the future. I feel like the horizon on our

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I love it. And I also just want to highlight the importance of record keeping of putting things down on paper or maybe an electronic form, creating time capsules for the future generations. Because I think a lot of what people probably are thinking or worried about a little bit is like, okay, I can do all this stuff to try and make things better. And

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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even give up the desire for any kind of credit, but not feeling like it will be of any significance. But what I've learned from you today is that it starts with the self and then it radiates out to the people we know and that maybe we cohabitate with. But even if we don't cohabitate with anybody, it radiates out from us.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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that it is important to get a sort of time capsule going so that people can feel like they have some significance in the future that they may not ever have immediate experience of, but to really like send those ripples forward and get the sense that those ripples are moving forward.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So for that reason, and especially given the nature of this podcast, for the reason that you gave these very concrete protocols, if you will, that we've highlighted in the timestamps, of course, as tools, as protocols, I really want to thank you because oftentimes discussions about past, present, and future can get a bit abstract and a bit vague for people.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And you've done us all a great service by making them very concrete and actionable. That's so much of what this podcast is about. It's one part information, one part option for action, right? We don't tell people what to do, but we give them the option for action. I'm certainly going to adopt some of these protocols.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And also for taking the time to come to talk with us today, um, share your wisdom and share what you're doing in many ways. Well, it is not in many ways. It is absolutely part of what you're describing, which is, um, putting your best self toward how things can be better now and in the future. It's also a great pleasure to sit down with somebody I've known for so many years and learn from you.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So it's a real honor and a privilege. And I know everyone else listening to and watching this feels the same way. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Ari Wallach. To find links to his book, to his television show and other resources related to Long Path, please see the show note captions.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

Huberman Lab

Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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cognition has really come closer in now. And as you said, we're in this like sort of hall of mirrors where it's constant stimulus and response. And I don't want today's discussion to be doom and gloom. We're going to talk about solutions.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Ari Wallach. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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But I think between what you're saying and what Jonathan Haidt, who is on this podcast, author of Anxious Generation, Coddling in the American Mind, professor at NYU, et cetera, has said, I'm starting to really believe that yes,

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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the human brain can focus on past, present, or future, or some combination, but that something about the architecture of our technologies and our human interactions, because those are so closely interwoven, that's taking place now has us really locked in the present in stimulus response. And I'm gonna just briefly reference a previous episode of the podcast I did.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It's one of my favorite conversations ever on or off microphone, which was, excuse me, with Dr. James Hollis, 84-year-old Jungian psychoanalyst, where he had many important messages there, but one of them was, We need, we absolutely need to take five to 10 minutes each day to exit stimulus response mode, typically by closing one's eyes and just looking inward.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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It doesn't even have to be called meditation in order to understand what our greater wishes are, how to link our current thinking and behavior to the future and to the past. And I think he's qualified to say this because he's an analyst that. that process actually is a reflection of the unconscious mind.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So during today's episode, Ari Wallach spells out for us not just the aspirations, not just what we want, but how to actually create that positive future and legacy for ourselves, for our families and for society at large. It's an extremely interesting take on how to live now in a way that is positively building toward the future.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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So to link these concepts in a more coherent way, is it possible that we are just overwhelmed with notifications, either the traditional type of notifications on your phone, but that we're basically just living in stimulus response all the time now? And if so, what direction is that taking ourselves as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a species?

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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I'm basically validating what you just said, even though you don't need my validation and just asking, like, how bad is it to just be focused on managing the day to day? Or maybe that's that's a better way to go about life.

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Create Your Ideal Future Using Science-Based Protocols | Ari Wallach

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Yeah, maybe we could just parse each of those one by one. So how do you define empathy for self?

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist and one of the world's foremost experts in parent-child relationships.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's because of those damn Star Wars movies. Oh, no, actually, Star Wars incorporated some frustration, but it's because of movies. Boom, you're supposed to just have the skill because you picked up the rock or the sword or the pen or the wand.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Look, I love, love, love this concept, which I believe to be entirely true, that the learning space between unskilled and skilled, if you will, is characterized by the feeling of frustration in mind and body. Yes. I don't want to rattle off another experiment, but there is just oh so much data. I'll share this with you offline.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The papers that is showing that brain plasticity changes in neural circuitry only occur when the chemical milieu of the brain is different than it normally is. Otherwise, how would the brain know it should change? So what sets the context for... massive change in our neural circuitry is when there's a lot of adrenaline in the body. Sorry, folks, it's true.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, and norepinephrine released in the brain. Now, you don't want to be in a state of panic or stress to the point where you're debilitated, but that shift in the chemical milieu sets the stage for rewiring of connections between neurons. I mean, this is known at the molecular level, it's known at the cellular level, it's known at the circuit level.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I'm excited to share that literature with you because it just basically is a bunch of nerd speak and numbers to support the fact that you're nailing it right in the bull's eye, which is without frustration, there is no rewiring of the neural circuits. And if you think about it, it had to be that way. Otherwise, why would the circuits change?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So that the error signal is what sets plasticity in motion. Now the actual rewiring occurs during sleep. So this is my reminder to make sure that your kids get enough sleep because that's when the actual, this is the phenomenon of not being able to do something coming back a few days or weeks later. And you're like, can do it.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Well, it's because it happened in sleep, the final portion of the rewiring.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I think 75% of people between the age of 7 and 18 are massively sleep deprived. And, you know, there's the neural rewiring deficits associated with that are serious. And these are what we call sensitive periods. I like sensitive periods more than critical periods because critical periods imply an open and shut. Sensitive is there's a tapering, but it does taper. So, yeah.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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This unskilled to skilled and frustration in the learning space model, this is part of something that you're putting together now. Could you expand on that?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I'm realizing as you're saying this, that the literature that I'm aware of about stress and trauma is actually relevant here in an interesting and perhaps surprising way whereby, you know, this thing I said earlier, you know, the brain only changes under conditions where norepinephrine and epinephrine are released.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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You know, there is such a thing as one trial learning and it's associated with negative experiences. And the reason negative experiences create such robust learning in only one trial is because there's a massive amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine and other neurochemicals released. So it's stamped into the nervous system. But learning of things we want to learn

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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relies on the same neurochemicals. I mean, there's a wild and really cool literature from a guy named James McGaw who showed that like if you spike adrenaline before learning, the learning is much faster and much more durable. If you spike adrenaline after learning, turns out the learning is more durable.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Now, we can't start getting into kind of, you know, biohacking experiments on kids or themselves, but the adrenaline is supposed to come during the learning itself, which is what you're saying. But the problem is if we stop once we're frustrated, we get the increase in adrenaline and norepinephrine and, again, other neurochemicals as well. Right.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Then the perception is that the plasticity loop is closed there. So what did you learn? When I do hard things, I get frustrated. When I stop, the frustration goes away. That's all you learn. In the same way that somebody exposed to trauma, this underlies the basis of almost all modern trauma therapies. It's in the right setting. Take people back through it sequentially.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Let them experience that and start to desensitize to it so they can complete that loop.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And so I think it's so important to push through frustration. And I think it's so important, I'm disagreeing with you here clearly, but that oftentimes that frustration can last more than just the learning session. It can be weeks or months or in some cases a year of a really challenging course or a sports course.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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sports uh participation and so that's where it gets tough because as empathic creatures one hopes we hate to see members of our own species suffer especially our kids and so it becomes this thing of like do you let them opt out like what did they learn by opting out and that's where it gets really complicated because we also got a forebrain which can set all these different rules and so um

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I love your use of story in narrative with your kids. It seems like you use that a lot.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Like instead of saying, you know, and forgive me for, I'm not, I'm not an analyst, but I feel like it starts with an observation like, okay, you're behaving this way. Maybe what's behind the behavior or you're expressing this, what's maybe deeper to that. But

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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when talking about your own experiences towards your kids, as you've been doing here in these pseudo hypotheticals, I'm sure some of them exist. We'll interview your kids later and find out. No, I'm kidding. It's clear that you use story as a way to kind of share genuinely, but also probe for what might be going on with them.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I have to say, I find it really delightful because it raises lots of questions. that I think anyone would have. And I think it's part of your gift, clearly, because so many people, you know, follow your advice. But the advice you give is also, it's interesting, it's like an observation. Like, frustration is key. I want to increase frustration tolerance.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But then you're not like, okay, you're going to hammer... down their throats, frustration tolerance in the following way. It sort of becomes a question like, where's their frustration in your life? And then you put it into your own narrative as opposed to necessarily asking them questions. I think asking kids questions or asking people questions generally is great. Like, hey, how can I do better?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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As you pointed out earlier. But it's really, I don't know if the word is disarming, but it's really in an entirely positive way. Like you use your own narrative to allow people to start going, oh yeah, like where am I experiencing frustration? Where can I tolerate that better? And so I think that there's this incredible triad of like, or tripartite narratives

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of like observe, consider, like the deeper layer, and then offering a narrative that's really a bunch of questions where you're speaking from your real truth. It's really elegant, I have to say.

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It's spectacular. I hadn't realized it until right now.

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I feel like kids are, as you said before, kids are so perceptive about what their parents are experiencing and they'll create or move towards all sorts of emotional gymnastics in order to work with that. Years ago, I saw, I think it was a YouTube video with Jim Carrey, who basically revealed that he became funny. as a way to make his sick mom laugh.

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That he grew up with a very sick mom, which is chronically ill. And so he would throw himself down the stairs and try and make her laugh. And he was an incredible world-class physical comic, among other aspects of comedy. But that his whole career was born out of this childhood tendency to notice that his mom was really hurting and try and basically make her laugh, make her feel something good.

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So you're acknowledging that inside him there might be a piece that still wants to do the wrong thing.

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Whether or not you have children, I assure you that today's episode is going to be immensely beneficial for all of your relationships. You will notice during today's episode that our studio backdrop is different. You will notice that for once, I was not wearing this particular style of shirt.

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I mean, is pretty far away from the parenting dynamic, but the understanding and actual data from like 12-step programs and group therapy generally, including trauma therapy that is of a group therapy nature, fully supports everything you said. Hearing the...

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terrible and or humiliating things that people have done or have done to them, as awful as that sounds, is often what underlies people's willingness to recover, ability to recover, and then they become the teachers over time.

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Like you said, I think you said so many incredible things there, but right at the end, you said something that I hope everyone internalizes, that when you do something embarrassing, Maybe even humiliating. The last thing you want to hear is, look, it's all going to be fine. The thing that actually helps is somebody who has experienced something similar and is doing fine.

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And, you know, now I'm thinking about this because it's just incredible the way that kids can pick up on something and then try and find a solution to it.

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Love it. And I feel like the story of your son bringing those puzzle pieces back is like, there's so much there.

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You know, I could imagine that for kids who have a sick parent, it could be mental challenges or physical challenges, that they've got to notice. Yes. And in the case of Jim Carrey, one could argue whether or not it was adaptive or not adaptive. He had this, you know, meteoric career, but eventually just left it, decided that wasn't what he wanted to do.

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And the fact that there was a delay and then he brought it back on his own accord and that you had already kind of let it go. That's I feel like a really interesting piece. It wasn't to like appease you. It was really something internal for him. Like he got the lesson there. for him, it wasn't just about like making mom feel okay about him.

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Like he clearly understood you still love him, but it wasn't about like fixing something externally as much as it was about fixing something internally, which I think is the, the addressing and overcoming the shame piece.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, if ever there was some core truths about brain plasticity, it's that frustration is associated with the chemicals that foster brain change. We know that. And that questions have a really interesting impact on learning. Which sounds kind of like a duh. Well, of course they do.

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But when we ask questions, it creates this open loop in the brain that the brain wants to solve as opposed to hearing a statement. That's why I always felt like those pictures on office walls, like motivation, when you blah, blah, blah, like the motivational statements don't mean much.

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in terms of because they're not about verb states when we ask questions that we put our brain into kind of a process of verb states of asking what behaviors are going to lead to which outcomes there's an interesting literature about this that um you know probably isn't fully relevant here but it gets back to trying to learn basic motor tasks and the same things are applied to basic cognitive tasks of like how do i solve this and a puzzle is a great um

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But leaving that extreme example aside, let's say a parent is sick with the flu or is grieving the loss of, God forbid, a spouse or... Or something really major. Yeah. At what point does the parent need to say, listen, I'm really hurting. This is bad. And I can handle it. When that might not actually be true. So the question is, you know, how much information to give kids.

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I love it. You taught a process through song, and there actually is a lot of data on music in the brain and how it organizes things, mostly in the form of a story of a beginning, middle, and end. And just the quickest example I can give is when we learn our ABCs, we learn them in song. right? It's A, B, C, D, E, F, G. You never forget that, right?

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It's much easier to learn things through rhythmic song motifs than it is through a list of letters or numbers.

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Yeah, so it fragments it into a beginning, middle, and end, and then there's an underlying repetitive sort of wave. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Okay, here I'm now. I'm singing. So, you know, at risk of you know, inducing all sorts of bad neural responses in listeners. But you get the point. It's a waveform that the brain can recognize. I actually have a friend who's a very accomplished musician.

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And I know the lyrics to his songs very well. And I said, remember that song? And he goes, well, I have to hear the... underlying melody and then he can remember all the words. He's a singer. He's a lead singer in a very well-known band. He doesn't even know the words to his own songs if you just ask them for him. But you give him the music and he's just out the gate.

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And he can do this in front of tens of thousands of people.

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It becomes a verb process. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. It's almost like saying like, oh, the mechanics of writing are you pick up, you put the pen between, you know, there's a whole rhythm to writing. There's a whole sequence of a motor sequence that we learn or eating or anything for that matter.

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No one who's an expert piano player thinks about playing the individual keys at the point where they've learned it. They've batched it into, it's sort of like chunking, but it has an underlying rhythm that's carried by a neural circuit that allows the expression of the movements of the fingers or the,

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the words out the mouth, or in this case, overcoming frustration to just kind of ride on top of all of it. So, um, there's an unconscious genius to, to what you, uh, what you did. And I love it. And maybe, um, as long as nobody hears me saying, I'll need to sing more to get through frustration. Um, I have a question about Ms. Edson.

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People are gonna be like, what? Before we started recording, you shared with us something I think is entirely appropriate to what we're talking about now, which is learning and learning hard things and frustration tolerance. And... You've evolved these concepts, you know, in the course of your work and through your own parenting child relationships, clearly your own and then yours with your kids.

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Who was Ms. Edson and what did she teach you? Because when you told me this, I was like, whoa, that's super valuable. We all need to know about this.

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Because you don't want to lie to them. On the other hand, you don't want them to feel the burden of... Yeah. of needing to worry about a circumstance. And I'm framing this in the context of sick parent, but I'm also raising this thing of financial worries. I have a close friend who told me that growing up there,

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parent was like constantly dealing with you know moving from one job to the next it was like this issue of whether or not we're going to have enough resources to get through the next year was a constant question and this person is now in their mid-30s and you can tell it still haunts them and it's completely shaped their relationship to work and finances yeah yeah i mean i think we can we can think about this compared to what would i want for my boss

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Love it.

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I'm going to thank you and Ms. Edson. Yes, thank you, Ms. Edson. I think the idea of lowering the stakes to be able to move forward is just spectacular in everything. I notice you do that. By the way, I'm not like analyzing. I'm just saying you do that with parenting. I think there's so much tension around this notion of like creating healthy, productive, functional kids.

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And I think there is a lot of shame for parents when things aren't going great and people know it or they know it. Yeah. The idea of creating lower stakes in order to be able to make pretty big moves over time where they're required or just do nothing when sometimes that's what's required.

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I think it's spectacular. I was going to ask you, and I never do this, but I was going to ask you if there were one thing that people could start the process of trying to be a better parent, better to themselves, if it's more about emotional containment, et cetera.

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Maybe it's this thing of, you know, asking, you know, at the end of today, like, what would be one thing that would allow me to have said it was a better day? Would that be it? Certainly that's powerful.

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Awesome. Well, this whole thing that you've attempted to take on is also really hard and you're doing incredible work, educating people on how to parent. There's so many things that you've said today. I'm not gonna recap them all. You know, we do timestamps and all that so people can find them, but in no particular order.

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I mean, you know, this concept of, you know, telling your kid you're right to notice when they notice something important in you or in others or in themselves. That rigidity is the enemy. Asking like what's this really about when they're doing or saying something or expressing themselves in a way that feels confusing or maybe especially when it's irritating.

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Encouraging frustration as a route to learning, like incredible. And then you said the more that you can locate somebody, the more you respect their values. which I think is incredible and on and on.

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I mean, there's just so many gems in today's conversation and so many actionable gems that you provide on social media, through your courses, through conversations like this and others that you're holding in other podcasts. And I just wanna thank you so much. You're teaching people how to parent others

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how to think about their own parenting oh yes that's the other one you said the the only kind of parenting that we do reflexively is the one that was done for us which will evoke um you know feelings of relaxation in some people and feelings of dread in others and um but it all just speaks to the importance of paying attention to this thing that we call parenting and

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I think the way that you're merging this with a thoughtful eye on technology, where it's taking us and where there are concerns, as well as, you know, where it can be utilized, it's just fantastic. I can't say enough good things about the work that you're doing, and I'm just so grateful that you're doing it. And I'm saying that on behalf of myself and everyone else.

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You're making the world a better place. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining today and for sharing so much. We'll, of course, point out where people can find you, but just keep going. It's awesome. I've learned a ton. I know everyone else has as well.

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Likewise, we'll do it again. Thank you for listening to today's episode with Dr. Becky Kennedy. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did. Right now, Dr. Becky has a 20% promotion going for her fantastic online program on parenting. Becky was kind enough to extend this discount until this Friday, January 17th, 2025 for Huberman Lab listeners.

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The reason for that is that this episode was recorded during the LA fires, what was initially called the Palisades fire, and then spread to multiple fires throughout LA County. So we were not able to access our normal studio.

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You can find more on that along with links to Dr. Becky's book, her terrific social media handles and more through the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple by clicking the follow button.

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On both Spotify and Apple, you can also leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to include on the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media handles. So that's Instagram, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Threads, and LinkedIn.

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And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab Podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab Podcast. So again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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So I want to express extreme gratitude to Rich Roll, our good friend in the podcasting space, who allowed us to use his podcast studio, which is where I'm seated now and where I held the discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. First off, our entire team, our homes and our studio are fine. I can assure you of that.

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Paul Conti, who came on this podcast to do a series about mental health, not just mental challenges, but also mental health, which is an interesting concept in its own right, has been quoted as saying that, you know, that if you were to list out the 100 most important things for romantic relationships, it would be self-care and communication repeated 50 times.

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And I'm thinking about that now because it sounds like a pretty good model for pretty much every relationship.

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Self-care, communication. And I must say, the first time I heard him say that, it wasn't on my podcast. It was on a different podcast. I was sort of surprised. I thought, self-care first? But the way you're framing it seems to me that if self-care comes first, or at least very high on the list of what parents should do, It frees up the kids to live and experience life with a lot more ease.

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A lot more peace.

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And to basically unburden them of about 50,000 jobs.

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I don't know the psychology literature or clinical literature around this, but I'm thinking about speed of emotional shifts.

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But most importantly, our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people who have lost their homes, lost pets. And sadly, there have been fatalities during the L.A. fires. So our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and we hope everyone remains safe. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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In my own experience of life, I've known moody people and I've known not as moody people. I define moody as people whose moods fluctuate quickly and sometimes spontaneously. But this idea that some people are like steady as a rock is a great concept, but we also know that we need to feel our emotions, express them to some extent.

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And yet there are people where if we were to plot this, it would look like a high frequency wave where some people are really upset, then they're feeling better again. They're upset, then they're feeling better again. I'm not talking about extreme pathology here. I'm talking about, you know, someone cuts them off in traffic and they're pissed, but then they're fine.

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They're very, very happy about something they see. So it doesn't always have to be negative. But then they're kind of like flat affect and then they're into something negative. I think that experience of emotions is so far and away different from the experience of emotions emitted from somebody who... You can kind of see the emotion coming. It's like a slow swell.

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It's like a expansion and then a contraction again that you have time. And I feel like I keep coming back to this theme of time perception. Anytime we have time or we hear about like in all the Buddhist traditions, like space, like you're trying to create mental space and you know, this gap between stimulus and response. It all sounds great, but with some people...

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you have to really be on your toes or perhaps you disengage. And so I've never heard a satisfying answer to this, probably because I've never asked it out loud. If you're a kid or if you're a parent and somebody is experiencing something, let's say they're really angry or really happy, You can imagine riding that wave in with them. You could also imagine sitting back from it.

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And some of this is probably what we'd call temperament. But maybe you could talk about this a little bit in the context of having one or both parents. It's kind of like a high frequency shifts between emotions versus kind of a slow expansion and then settling of emotions. Because I feel like those are two completely different experiences of life.

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy, welcome back.

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How useful is it to talk to kids about emotions when they're not happening?

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Grateful to Rich Roll for lending us his studio under the duress of fires in Los Angeles. I'm praying that his home is okay. It's unclear at this moment, but in any event, Let's talk about emotions, both theory and practice. And if we can place it in the context of parenting, that would be great, but I'm certain that this has a broader theme that pertains to everybody.

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And as far as we know, a uniquely human thing, I could be wrong about this, but a colleague of mine at Stanford and psychiatrist called Dicer off talked about this, um, that humans are the only species that we are aware of that sheds tears for sake of emotion.

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Other animals, they have lacrimal glands. They produce, you know, water, so to speak, salty water that comes out of their eye region, but not as it relates to emotions. At least we don't think so.

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My reflex would be to tell them the biology of tears. Noam Sobel, who was on the podcast, told us that tears contain hormones that signal to other people, pheromones, excuse me, that literally change the biology of the people around you. We can actually smell tears. We don't realize we're doing it. See, here I go. So I realize I spend enough time with kids that if you tell them that, they're like,

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Whatever.

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So I love the theory of emotions or how we would theoretically respond to something, but then there's the reality. So as a parent, let's say you have a stance in your home and in your family that it's okay to be sad. Like sadness is normal, it happens, it passes, et cetera. But let's say you're feeling particularly sad about something.

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It also seems that here we're not defining the age of the kids, but if one presents themselves as perfect or close to it in any kind of relationship, work, romantic, parenting, et cetera, sooner or later, you're going to fall from grace because they're either going to be looking for the mistake or the moment you make a mistake, it's going to be this fracture in the picture that people see.

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had of you. And I have to say, and I think some people might get irritated or even, dare I say, triggered by the language I'm about to use, but I feel like the real ninja move in all of this is to acknowledge that there are power dynamics between parent and child, but then to try and dissolve the power dynamics.

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Now you may or may not have children. If you do, today's episode is absolutely for you. If you don't, well, you were once a child. Perhaps you're even still a child. Today's episode also will have valuable knowledge and tools that you can apply to your life.

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And I say this in the context of having run a lab for a long time, which is very different than raising small children. But you have people who are coming into your laboratory. They are, if they're your graduate student or postdoc, they're staking their whole career on your ability to teach and mentor. And a lot is at stake. Nothing is for certain. They might not get a job.

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The papers might not work out. And so there's just so much tension around it. And so as a PI, as a principal investigator in our lab, I remember feeling that pressure of like, it's gotta work out. And one of the best things that ever happened to me as a graduate student was that my first paper took forever to get accepted. And we almost got in and then it didn't get in.

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And then finally it got in such that every paper after that felt like a breeze because it took so damn long the first time. And I got to see that my advisor couldn't like make magic happen. And fortunately, that's the way the scientific process is supposed to work.

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And I think about this in the context of parenting, like if you're seen as invincible, you know, we hear about this, like people say, I thought my dad was Superman. I thought my mom was Superwoman, you know? And then, but you can imagine how disappointing it must be when they discover anything about a lack of capacity or a break in emotional stability, et cetera.

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So how does one present themselves as both powerful in the positive sense of the word, such a thorny word, but powerful in the positive sense of the word, but human and vulnerable to making mistakes in a way that... you don't give up the essential, let's just call it what it is, a power dynamic with your kids so that the kid then doesn't feel they have to parent you.

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Do you express that and show that in front of your kids? Because I've also heard that young kids in particular, younger than eight or nine, perhaps shouldn't be aware that their parents are experiencing, say, extreme sadness because it can be scary to them or they might feel like their world is destabilizing. And then we also hear a lot about kids feeling like they had to parent the parents.

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You asked your kids this.

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And then this whole thing becomes pretty complicated. So while there's no perfect world where one knows what to do every single time, How do you look at this business of modeling emotions and also encouraging kids to be able to experience and express their emotions?

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So powerful. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.

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Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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What sets Chuve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Juve products.

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Again, that's Juve, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. I love, love, love this thing about asking for a request. It's different than asking for feedback, which could quickly lead to a list of all the things that one does wrong as opposed to a request for how one could do better.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I think there's an important distinction there. And it seems that the question that the parent or who knows, the boss or whatever, maybe it's with a romantic partner, needs to ask themselves is, what is this request really about? Like what's underneath it? I'm just paraphrasing essentially what you said. And what's it really about?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Is it a request for more autonomy, for more social connection with other people? And then one starts to realize, certainly in this example that you gave of a child asking for more time with their phone late at night, is that it actually has nothing to do with your relationship to them. It's really about their relationship to their friends.

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And the fact that they might feel as if they're missing out.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And that leads me to another question, which is what if you as the parent, partner, boss, et cetera, keep your phone close to you until midnight? And they know that. Yeah. So one of the worst things that I believe anyone can say is, you know, do as I say, not as I do.

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It's just such a blatantly arrogant stance of you're supposed to do what I say because I say so, but I'm not going to do it because I don't want to. And yet there are times like in parent-child relationships or boss-employee relationships where you're telling somebody to do something and you yourself are not going to do it or no longer do it or choose not to do it. And

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in reality you don't have to yeah and maybe there's a good reason why you don't or don't have to that's the nature of that's why i use these uh words um power dynamics yes which which everyone hears and goes oh boy here we go but but it is an issue of power dynamics you have more power than the than the kid so what you're doing is you're giving the kid power to express where they want more agency i like the word maybe agency more than power yeah um

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Did you grant your son the right to use his phone later into the evening?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Not to pry into your personal.

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I didn't mean to pry into your family dynamics.

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I had something come to mind, which is not a phrase that I've ever used before or heard before. But what comes to mind is kind of statements of stance.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I feel like statements of stance in parent-child relationships, families, workplace, romantic relationships, et cetera, are great when they're about actions or about sort of overriding themes. Like, no matter what, I'm trying to keep you safe. I might not get everything right, but like that is like non-negotiable internally. And I'm going to try and make it non-negotiable externally.

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Like it's a statement of stance about actions like or, you know, keeping you healthy and safe is my number one priority. Those are facts. Those are things that one can really say and believe and understand. you know, until the end of time, be trying to incorporate into one's behavior. But I feel like statements of stance about emotions are very dangerous. Like, um, we don't yell in this house.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Um, you know, uh, it's okay to cry, right? There's always a caveat. Of course it's okay to cry, right? But there are times when crying is less appropriate. There's times when yelling might be appropriate. There's times when emotions need to be expressed or not expressed in a particular way because I, look, I don't think I'm alone in thinking that, you know, the kid tantruming in the

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in a public environment is an embarrassing thing for them, for their parent, for people around. And it's not the end of the world, right? It's a tantrum, for goodness sake, right? Like people will survive. But I feel like statements of stance about emotions kind of hold us to this standard that we'll never be able to meet. But that statements of stance about action... Mm-hmm.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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are, you know, until we fail and, you know, hope we don't, we can say things like, you know, my job is always to keep you safe. I'm always going to try and make the best decision for you and for your sister, for instance.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But I think that many people, I'm not just speaking from my own experience, but in talking to friends and others that they grew up in homes where like there were these philosophies, these like statements of stance. And the moment that things didn't match that statement of stance, like the whole concept of what parents and children are supposed to be about just kind of started to dissolve.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And it creates that underlying fear. Like, do they even really know what they're doing?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Or maybe they don't know what they're doing, but maybe they're trying. So in any case, it's just something that maybe we could talk about for a moment.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, on the refrigerator.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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What about we don't swear in this house? So what I was about to say- And then you're on the phone and then you screw up and then the kid goes, you swore.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Today, Dr. Becky Kennedy teaches us an immense number of extremely valuable tools for the workplace, for romantic relationships, for family relationships of all types, not just parent-child relationships, and of course, also for parent-child relationships.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Let's talk about guilt and shame.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I've heard some kind of catchphrase-y stuff, not from you, but like, oh, you know, guilt is about the thing you did and shame is a feeling about who we are. And, you know, while I'm not against those sort of 1990s, early 2000s kind of psychology-isms, I feel like they're not very useful.

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in the same way that hearing that there's a gap between stimulus and response. And if you identify that gap, well then goodness, you're gonna be the kind of person that can feel stressed, but not be reactive. You're gonna be responsive, not reactive.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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That's just a bunch of words that doesn't, here I'm a biologist, so I'll just say, doesn't take into account the fact that the biology of stress changes your perception of time and a whole bunch of other things that basically make that gap between stimulus and response much, much smaller.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I think once people understand that, they go, oh, so like the kitchen refrigerator magnet or the poster on the wall that says, you know, like there's a gap between stimulus and response. It was supposed to save me, but it didn't. Of course not. We're just in different states of mind at different times. So how do you define, no pressure here, but how do you define guilt versus shame?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And what about guilt and shame?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The picture I get in my mind is sort of like having antennae cast in every direction. That's right. Except perhaps at the exclusion of paying attention to the antennae that are inward. Exactly. And we are, you know, attentional resources are finite. I mean, we just don't have the capacity to... That's right. Like...

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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respond to other people's emotions and feel at the same time to the same degree that we would if we just concentrated on theirs or our emotions. I mean, that's just a fact of how humans work.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash hubermanlab to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash hubermanlab to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman. Wow. I say wow because I think the lens that you're looking at guilt through and the way you're defining it is so very different than the way it's been discussed ever.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I think this is a super, super important topic. So I'd like to lathe into it a little bit more. Yeah. In some ways, the way that I think many people experience guilt, at least according to your definition, which by the way, I love, it's when we've act out of alignment with our values versus feeling pressure

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I think about, I mean, Lord knows I don't have the best reputation as having a short text response latency. It's variable. Sometimes I'm quick on the draw and other times I'm like, oh goodness, it'll be days or weeks. I mean, over the holidays, I was spooling through it. I would respond to people like a week later.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And, you know, I do my best, but I do often feel, quote unquote, guilty about not being as responsive in text to a number of people because I care about them.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I value them. Yeah. But I get overwhelmed by text messaging very easily to the point where I have to put my phones out of the room when I work, etc., etc. So the way I experience a bunch of text messages coming in is as pressure that then I feel guilty. I'm not trying to make this about me.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I feel quote unquote guilty. But what's interesting is I believe in cognitive dissonance. And then what I notice is that then my brain tries to bridge that gap. I come up with these like justifications with like, well, when I text people and they don't respond for like two weeks, I don't get upset, which is true unless it's in a particular sort of category of circumstances.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So how come the way they view this whole dynamic is not the same as the way I view this dynamic? Maybe this is a more male-centric view as opposed to feeling porous, like I feel they're upset. But I will say, you know, in fairness to all the chromosomes and their arrangements, I do feel upset. bad. Yeah. Like it sucks.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Like I love these people and they're reaching out to say whatever, happy new year or something. And I'm feeling pressure as opposed to feeling how wonderful it is to have people in my life.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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From me or to me?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The truth is, if I'm really honest, I hate shallow exchange of any kind, except maybe a fist bump to somebody you just kind of feel some kinship with on the street and you have that connect and you just give them the fist bump. Great. But I like... more in-depth, lengthy connection.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Three-hour-long conversations or drop... A friend came by the other day for New Year's. He was on my list of people that... And yes, I made a list of people that I want to deepen my friendship with in the new year. He came by. We had a two-hour lunch. We chatted. And I feel like It was awesome and worth a million single line text messages.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I'm also the kind of person where like I'm good to not see him for a while, not because I'm tired of him, but because I also have other friends and things to do.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So I'm more of a depth, not breadth kind of guy.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Again, not- It's not an atypical response. I've heard parents do that.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Like, don't you want me to have a social life?

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I love it. And I can't help but recall when I was a kid, after dinner, my dad would sometimes take a walk by himself. Now, granted, he's a physicist and he's a theoretical physicist, so he's like all his experiments were in his head. I mean, he did work on paper, too, but...

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So he would take these walks and occasionally I'd see him coming back from these walks and he'd be smoking a cigar, something he doesn't do anymore, fortunately. I'm grateful that he's very robust. He was actually a guest on the podcast recently, talked about science and life, et cetera. And one of the things that I remember thinking and still to this day think and feel is that

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's kind of awesome how he takes this walk and he looked like so happy with the cigar and his thoughts and he'd walk. And I wanted to be on those walks with him. He was very, very busy. In fact, I wanted a lot more time from him than I got. It's kind of interesting because now it's oftentimes that I'm the busier one. The tables turn, kids.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But in all seriousness, I didn't think of it as self-care, but it was so clear that that was his time.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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That was absolutely his time. And I knew when I could and should join for things and when I didn't. And so when you say the more you can locate someone, the more you respect their values, I feel like bells go off. It's like exactly that. And there are other examples of my mom, et cetera. But it's kind of interesting when we see somebody

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adult or child, like really in their element of their thing, it's almost like we love them for it and through it. And it fills us, I think, with a healthy sense of safety. Like they're right there. Kind of like the pilot flying the plane really well. We're like, actually, we don't really want to know about the pilot. I want to hear the thing at the beginning. We're about ready to take off.

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I actually don't like it when we're landing and they say, we'll be on the ground in just a few moments. I'm like, we're at 10,000 feet. Can we make it a little bit longer than that? But you get the point, which is that I don't want to hear from the pilot. I just want the pilot to fly the plane.

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We discuss themes that have not been discussed previously on the Huberman Lab podcast, topics such as guilt, which Dr. Becky Kennedy offers a completely unique perspective on, one that I've never heard before and that frankly, I don't think anyone has heard before. In fact, she distinguishes between what most people think is guilt

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And you do become a parent overnight.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I'll remember my graduate advisor had two kids while I was working in the lab saying that there were all these books back then about pregnancy. And she was like, it's wild. There are all these things of what you should eat and shouldn't eat and how you should, you and your partner and how you should prepare for the birth and all this.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And then they're like, and then at the hospital, they're like here. And you're like, Now, granted, that was in, you know, the early 2000s.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I assure you that your legacy extends far beyond that, but includes it as well. You've had a tremendous impact and continue to. I mean, it wasn't long ago that, you know, the power dynamics of parent-child relationships where, you know, you do what I say and I'm the parent, you're the kid and like that kind of thing. And I grew up in a different era.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I'm 49 now and I've been wanting to say I'm 49 now so that I can actually say something with having had some experience when things were truly very different. They were just so different.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It was like you... Took what you got and you worked with it and, you know, things are so different thanks to your part in all of this. And one thing I do want to return to, because I realize I took us off track with it, is this idea of kids, but perhaps adults as well, feeling isolated. or thinking they feel someone else's feelings, taking that on. Yeah.

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This difference between real guilt and, gosh, it's really hard to come up with a word for it. At one moment I thought, well, maybe it's faux guilt. But, no, you're not pretending. You're actually feeling something, which feels like guilt, smells like guilt, tells you it's like guilt.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, it's a whole landscape.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's a whole landscape. But, you know, one practice that I'm familiar with that I know exists in a couple of different realms of let's call it modern psychology tools is this idea of creating a frame separation. So like after you come together with somebody, say, to like do therapy or something or you've had sort of an emotional break. bind or entanglement doesn't have to be negative.

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That one way that you can learn over time to differentiate their needs and wants from your needs and wants is this idea of in your head, I know it sounds kind of corny, but there's a clear neuroscientific basis for this, at least to my understanding, of in your head, you say, for instance, like if we had just done this, like we had some resonance around something, maybe an argument.

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Okay, like Dr. Becky and I got into a fight. that in order to really be able to move away from that and see it clearly, how much of that was yours, how much of that was mine, there's this idea that you tell yourself, okay, what are five ways in which you and I are clearly distinct entities? So you say, and I know folks might chuckle at this, but you say like, okay, I'm a man, you're a woman.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I live in California, Dr. Becky lives in New York. You could even make it, like, first person. You could say, like, or third person, rather. You could say, I, Andrew Huberman, am wearing, you know, a black shirt and a black over shirt, and Dr. Becky is wearing black and white. Okay, so some people might think, like, what's the use of that?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But to me as a neuroscientist, whoever came up with that, and it wasn't me, is... nothing short of brilliant because the brain organizes emotions in these broader schemas of physical objects and physical distance and distance in time. And that's the way that we can differentiate between ourselves and everything around us.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And there's a whole discussion to be had about this, but so it's something that, um, I've been playing with a little bit, um, because I don't claim to be this ultra empath, um, or anything, but I think, uh, It's clear that sometimes we take in our thoughts and feelings about what other people are feeling, sometimes accurate, sometimes not. And it can become very difficult.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Whether or not someone's a one of these, I guess you call it deeply feeling. Deeply feeling kids. Deeply feeling kids or not. I mean, anytime you get into an emotional resonance, good or bad.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I think we're porous. We're porous, and that's part of what makes humans so beautiful. But I've found that practice to be very useful, even if it's just in my own head. Like they're over there and I'm over here, but not even necessarily pushing off them, but thinking like, oh, like I'm me and you're you. And there are a bunch of ways in which we differ in time and space.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I think the nervous system – comes to understand that as a felt thing, as opposed to just a statement like, hey, like you own your emotions, I'll own mine. That's just a statement. Is this any of this?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I love it. Can we talk about projection for a second? One of the things that drives me insane, people close to me know this, because of this issue of porousness versus non-porousness, is when people tell me how I feel. And so I've talked to a few people very qualified psychiatrists about this, and it's called projection. Sometimes it's, if in anger, it's evacuative projection.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Like, you think I'm crazy. Someone will say, like, you think I'm crazy. Or you're upset with me or something like that. I feel like projection is one of the kind of litmus tests of how porous we are. Because in theory, somebody should be able to tell us that we feel whatever. And if we first look inside, and by the way, I love this concept of do you first look inside or outside?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Do you listen to what's inside or outside first when something kind of arises emotionally outside you? Love, love, love that. It's something I'll have to explore. But if we don't do that, then you could see how projection would be very effective. And I'm not accusing anyone of using this in any kind of diabolical way.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I think people just do it because it worked and they're doing it because they've always done it. But if somebody says, you know, like, you don't care about me as a friend or... you know, telling someone how they feel is so very different than telling someone how we feel. Duh. All right. It's kind of an obvious. And yet once you start watching for projection, you see it all the time.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So it's the absence of information that causes the harm.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Not just at you, but like in between people. Right. Like, you know, like I know this stresses you out, but you know, people start doing it all the time.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And it's very interesting to see how people kind of divide into a couple of different groups on this, maybe two or more groups in terms of whether or not it affects them and if it gets in their head or somehow they're like, no, no, it's ridiculous. I don't, I don't feel that way. And for me, it's very context specific, but I love your thoughts on projection, both towards kids and from kids.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And it's the lack of coherence between what they're observing and feeling and kind of this like open loop. If I kind of place it in neuroscience-y terms, I feel like the brain does think in terms of stories. Stories have a beginning, middle, and an end, and they kind of want to know where they are in that story.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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You know, when I was a kid, I used to push every button in the elevator.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Does that mean I'm a sociopath?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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No, I'm kidding. You just want to push them. I'm joking. I'm joking.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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To be right in an argument?

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Not if you want an effective outcome, no.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It took me many years to learn, but someone taught it to me in one hour. I feel very grateful that she taught me this, that she didn't tell me to do it, but I just realized if you just like, I don't have any word other than just like soften. If you just kind of like, um, imagine becoming more like a noodle than a, like a rigid bar of iron. I just like go.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I actually, I think of, um, the way that like my, he always comes up, but my, I had this bulldog mastiff Costello and he was like super lazy. The contract with him was he would protect me with his entire life. But if my life wasn't on the line, noodle.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I remember just thinking, like, if I just go there, then the basic contract of, like, I care about you, I'll protect you with my life is still there. So I guess I learned it from my bulldog, but it sort of played out in a romantic relationship. And it was just really beautiful. It was one of the best things I learned from the two of them.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Is how I just, like, literally, like, physically softened. then, like, everything becomes apparent. Somehow, for me, it allows me to get back into my own eggshell.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But still have optics out. Now, that's me. I realize it's, you know, and that doesn't mean in the heat of the moment I'm not, like, feeling like I want to be reactive.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But for me, a physical change to my body, self-directed physical change to my body, is what just kind of, like, changed everything.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Amen to that.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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These are super important and novel approaches to things that I think everybody deals with, kids in the picture or not. My audience sometimes gets angry with me when I – I ask very long extended questions, but could I just share with you something I learned about an experiment? Because I think it blew my mind. I won't take long. There's a imaging experiment.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So you put people in a scanner, they image their brain, see which areas are active, fMRI. There's a really wild experiment where they bring people in for the scan. They don't tell them why they're there. And they tell them they're going to be paid $30. And they set out three $10 bills. Maybe you know this experiment. I don't know. And they go into the scanner. And then they come out.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And then the researcher leaves. And there's a discussion, et cetera, et cetera. And at some point, one of the $10 bills is removed by the researcher. And people are told at the end of the experiment, you took one of the $10 bills. And they're like, no, I didn't, because they didn't. Nobody says you're right. But then they reimage them.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And they compare that to a condition in other subjects where people actually did a little sneaky steal during a money game. And the same areas of the brain light up that we think are associated with guilt. In other words, if somebody is told that they did something, Even if they know they didn't, there are aspects of brain circuitry that reflect a quote unquote feeling of guilt.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's like it introduces this question about reality. And so they can know with 100% certainty, you can know with 100% certainty that you did not do something. And yet it starts to introduce these questions about how you gauge reality.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Simply because somebody you just met a few minutes earlier, yes, in a position of authority, they're the researcher, you're the subject, et cetera, told you that you did it. I think this has huge implications for parent-child relationships, for romantic relationships, workplace relationships, for... real bias in the outside world.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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You can imagine if you're told your whole life that you're a piece of garbage or that you're part of a bad group or something like this. I'm not trying to get political here. You could come to believe that at a level that is biological, even if cognitively doesn't make sense.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So this is where I think about this challenging boundary between knowing what we know, being a container, staying in our frame, pick your favorite lingo around this, And the fact that words and the emotions of other people really do have the capacity to rewire us on the inside.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Wealthfront. I've been using Wealthfront for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade, and I absolutely love it. Every January, I set new goals for the year. And one of my goals for 2025 is to focus on saving money.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Okay, so you reminded me. So this is the wild part.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The distribution of kind of like people who have this... By the way, folks, there aren't single brain areas for whole emotions, but let's just for sake of simplicity here. That have the guilt area activated even when they didn't take the money.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The entire population of subjects doesn't experience that to the same degree. You have these people for whom it's very high amplitude response and others who aren't.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Now, I don't recall, and I need to go back and look at the study, if it divided according to male-female because earlier you said that this tendency— I would bet a million dollars that if I got to know those people, the people who really light up—

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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of kind of a lack of validation or even in the face of criticism i would bet my money on that psychological kind of is that a moderator a mediator i don't know you would tell me so i'd be very curious about that great well i have no skin in the game like i didn't run this study and i'll go back and check it out it's a collection of studies and i hadn't known about this i mean i read the neuroscience literature but i hadn't known about this i find it fascinating

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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and an entirely different set of emotions and offers you very useful practical tools for when you experience guilt and how to work with guilt. We also extensively discuss frustration or what she calls frustration tolerance.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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like a complete yes, of course, on the one hand, and also super surprising on the other. Yeah. And just oh, so cool. Yeah. In the sense that it's informative. And it's making me think that some people really need to do the work of paying more attention to other people's emotions and feeling them a little bit more. And other people probably need to do the exact opposite.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, I think there's clearly a distribution and whether or not it's a binary distribution or it's kind of like a normal distribution, I don't know, but there's clearly variants here from one person to the next and probably even depending on how well rested we are and all the rest. But I do think that

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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we do kind of fall into phenotypes of prone to reacting to other people's emotions without hearing and listening to and responding to ours first, like truly ours first, versus people who are just really out there.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I realize it's very different than any other kind of relationship, but when I first went from being a postdoc to having my own laboratory, the chair in my department, my chairman in one department anyway, he said, you know, you should get a great big desk that's like really thick I was like, yeah, like, why? I mean, I get it.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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You don't want to be sitting, like, right next to your employees or something, but, like, why so? And he goes, so that when they cry, you won't feel like you need to cry or take care of them. You'll just slide the Kleenex across the desk. And I was like, are you kidding? And he was like, no. And then... Years later, I looked back and I realized I understood what he was saying.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I mean, he didn't know me at all, but he was just saying probably something about himself, which is, people are gonna come into your office, they're gonna cry, it does happen, and you're going to need to be the boss.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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which is to be supportive and empathic, but like you can't get pulled into it because they might be crying about something they don't like about the lab or about something not happening the way they want it. I mean, who can imagine any other reason to cry in your boss's office? But maybe they have a family issue and, you know, so you have to remember you're the boss.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I ended up with a desk that was kind of medium in width. But I think that nowadays there's a lot more – kind of bleeding of roles. And, you know, it used to be that everyone got really dressed up for work. Now dressing down is like common in certain circumstances and not others. I think that there's a lot of kind of lack of clarity about

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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here we go again, you know, power and authority and, but also kind of staying in our own frame versus taking on someone else's frame.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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You know, I have a friend who runs a pretty large business and he did the same experiment that you did of asking people, you know, how he could do better. But First, he unfortunately made the mistake of asking people how they felt about being there. And they ended up making one of these emotion clouds where they took, everyone filled out a thing and wrote what the most dominant emotions were.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And then he told this story, like, call me late at night. He sits down and they're going to present this as data in front of everybody. And this emotion cloud comes up and the biggest bubble in the middle just says stress. And he was mortified, right? But he learned that they all feel really, really, really stressed. That sort of exercise would never have happened 10, 15 years ago.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's like, yeah, like I won't say what profession he's in for sake of privacy, but like it's a profession where stress is part of the process and you don't kind of get the certificate at the end, so to speak, if you don't experience stress.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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That makes sense. I have a rule, which is if my pulse rate goes above a certain limit, my thumbs stop working, meaning I won't allow myself to text. I don't talk on the phone. I'll just go in the bathroom and just sit for a second if I have to. But that's rare. Typically, I just I'm like, I have a rule. My heart rate goes up. My thumbs don't work.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I just do nothing. I follow the do nothing thing. I just wait. I mean, I also have a rule, which is unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of me, it usually can wait. Drives people crazy, but they thank me later. Like unless somebody is literally hemorrhaging, like I can pause my response. Because I'm a kind of like move fast, get things done person.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And actually it was taught to me by a chairman of a major university in your home city of New York City. He said, there's always more time. And I said, that's ridiculous. He said, unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of you, there's always more time.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I, amen, a thousand times over. No, I, I don't think we can be efficient in relationships. It's like efficiency and other things is beautiful. Um,

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, slowing down is rarely a mistake. That's really true. I guess occasionally, but rarely a mistake. Really true. I'd like to talk a little bit about technology. I know this is a growing interest of yours.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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For more information, see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as the PFAS or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances and countless other kitchen products.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I've been thinking a little bit based on our earlier discussion about people who are in their own container or sensing what's going on inside them prior to paying attention to and sensing what's going on in other people, because clearly both are important. I don't like this idea that it's like one or the other. Yeah.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But with the advent of text messaging, so here I'm not going to talk about social media. This is not about social media. With text messaging, first of all, this is the first time in human evolution that humans have written with their thumbs. That's weird, been kind of quirky reflection.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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But the other one is this is the first time in human evolution, meaning very recently, that we are aware of what's going on with so many other people and we're expected to at least know it and perhaps even respond to it. I mean, it's just, I know people younger than 30 are probably going, wait, no, it's always been this way, but it wasn't always this way.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Clearly our brain has adapted to this new format, but it did not evolve in this format, whereby you're getting on a plane and you look at your phone and you are aware of the movements and requests and maybe kind statements, et cetera, from other people. We're tethered.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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in so many ways, and that means that our brain is really tethered to the states of others, their emotional states, their physical states, where they are. You said, and I'll keep repeating it because I love it so much, the more you can locate somebody, the more it reflects their values.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So being able to locate somebody in space and time and understand how bounded they are or not to their own emotions or yours, fantastic. But the fact that you have 10 people in your phone that you're aware of, you're not even supposed to be aware of 10 people at once, except the 10 people perhaps around you on the, you know, boarding a plane.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So we're being forced to navigate a new landscape with all this.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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After this conversation folds, we'll look at our phones. You couldn't have that many... I guarantee you one thing, no matter how many text messages or few text messages you have, it's far more conversations, if you will, than you could possibly have by phone at once. Yep. So in the old days, you left messages and you'd get on the phone when you could.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I'm not saying we go back to that, but I think we might be asking ourselves to do something that is impossibly hard and maybe even bad for us.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And my colleague Anna Lembke, who wrote Dopamine Nation, cited some data that humans have more free time now across socioeconomic groups, more free time for everybody than ever before, more expectation of immediate gratification. And it's not just the texts that we're getting. It's, for some people, the texts that they're not getting.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Frustration tolerance is an extremely important theme for everybody to understand and apply in their lives because frustration tolerance, as Dr. Becky Kennedy so aptly points out, is central to the learning process of anything at every age.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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They're thinking about the people that they haven't heard back from, etc.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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The number of tethers. Right, exactly. The number of tethers is just astonishing. I had a conversation with somebody recently that popped to mind where it was a little bit, it was like a low friction one that ended in a really good place where I said, you know, the problem is, you know, I was talking about, there's a little bit of an age gap.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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And I said, you know, the problem is you think slow is low. Like, what I was saying was I like to just chill. This is something I haven't done enough of in my life, because I'm a pretty ambitious person and always have been since I was little about everything. But I've learned that, like, slow isn't low. Like, I love just, like, sitting down and, like, hanging out with the dog or just...

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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It's like slowing down. And it used to feel like slow was low. It used to feel like, oh, nothing's happening or this is depressing or it's boring. And I think in recent years that became more and more the case as I got more and more pulled into technology. And then I did a little bit of a technology distancing experiment, if you will.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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I have this wooden box that someone made for me and I put my phones in there. And it's so amazing how once you put the phone in a different container, it's it like completely changes the relationship to it. I don't get it, but anyway, again, physical barriers to take emotional steps, always a good idea. And I just realized like slow isn't low, like slow is awesome.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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So I totally agree that the circuits of our brain have now adapted to expect immediate gratification. I like to think, and maybe this is a false wish, but I like to think that there are components of our brain that are hardwired enough through tens or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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that might be able to recognize and appreciate the slow moments and not feel like slow is low, meaning slow is depressing. But I do think that if one is weaned in, raised in an environment where you expect things quickly, well then, you know, it's going to feel like the horse and cart compared to the car at some level.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

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Yeah, it's awesome. You know, I said it last time we spoke, I'll say it again. You know, if you're thinking of adopting, I'd be happy to put myself up for adoption. It's such a beautiful philosophy and stance to take around effort and frustration. I mean, again, this isn't about my life, but I feel so blessed that I came up in science where things take forever.

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Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8518.47

You can work two years on a project and then discover you do the right control experiment and you're like, we got nothing. Like literally, we have nothing. Yeah. There wasn't and there still isn't a tendency to publish what are called negative results, which aren't bad results, but where you basically got nothing. You can find a flaw in the reagents you're using. You get nothing.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8536.922

You're starting again. And to have that, you know, a few times and to have some papers take two, three, four years to get accepted, other papers six months. I'll tell you, the six months feels really short. But these days we get so much immediate gratification. The other day I was staying at a hotel and I ordered food in. I don't do it that often. I was like, I really want like a poke bowl.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8560.174

There's that poke bowl place. I ordered it. It was there in 11 minutes. Wow. I was like, whoa, like, this is so wild. I was like, I got to be careful. Not because I'll overeat pokeballs. You can only have so many pokeballs. But it's like, you just, it's there.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8574.439

Yeah. It's so, you know. It's incredible.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8577.6

And sad and scary and exciting and all the things, you know. So I think having variable durations of effort, reward in one's life. And being able to see where like the latency is very short. Yes, social media, but, you know, other things that where you have longer duration effort to reward contingencies.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8597.635

I'm sounding kind of, this is like nerd speak, but I've gone on record saying before, and I'll say again that, you know, dopamine that is achieved without, you know, effort preceding it is just be really careful. Doesn't matter if it's amphetamine, cocaine, social media or anything else. You get used to the schedule.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8617.335

And I think we need to be able to tolerate and enjoy and lean into and savor variable schedules of effort and reward.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8655.039

Well, I think about it as a friend used to call it years ago, birthday money. There's one time each year, okay, maybe a couple because of the holidays, when you're supposed to get presents just for being you. It's called your birthday. Or if you're a kid, you know, or whatever holidays are where we celebrate kids by giving presents or we celebrate each other.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

866.114

I can't help but put this neuroscience lens on this because I find it so interesting that what you're basically saying, if I understand correctly, is that until we can place things into a story, which is really a sense of beginning, middle and end, a sense of time, it just reverberates in us. I mean, I think I can't help myself. You know, we've

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8672.552

But every other day, you're not supposed to get rewards necessarily just because, not just for being you. The rewards are out there in life and appreciating things. I'm not trying to be too stoic here. But there's only one day each year where you get literally presents just for being you. The other stuff is supposed to require effort.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8792.335

Now, I have a friend, very, very successful, who told me that he wasn't until, you know, until he was in his 40s that he had like kind of a major difficult life, a major business disappointment. And it almost crushed him. Like, you know, but he had never had that before. He had been so successful over and over again.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8811.563

You know, it was fun for me to talk to my dad recently on the podcast because we haven't had a conversation like that ever. And we were talking about sort of mistakes that one makes in the context of, you know, work and et cetera. And he said, it's still ringing in my ears. He said, well, you know, those humiliations are actually good for us. He called them humiliations. I was like, really?

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8832.878

And he was like, yeah, you know, they, they humble us and they keep us thoughtful about what we're doing next. And I was like, yeah, but it was kind of wild to hear that. I don't know why I need to hear it externally because I know it's true. I knew it was true, but yeah, it's not just making mistakes.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8847.602

Like sometimes, listen, I'm fully against bullying where I understand how that can be very destructive, but Like, there are going to be times when we're going to feel humiliated. And to be able to bounce back from that is pretty awesome. I actually think that builds character strength. I do.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

888.169

I don't want to give the impression we've got fires burning all around us in terms of this building, but with some distance between us and the fires, that's actually true. And I think one of the things that's so destabilizing for kids and adults in this kind of circumstance is that we don't know how this is going to work out. We just don't. And of course, none of us have a crystal ball.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8962.58

Right. Now, I love the analogy of flying because I, you know, I'll never forget driving in really thick fog for the first time. This happens if you grew up in the Bay Area. Just being able to see one reflector at a time and being terrified. Now, like driving in fog never feels great, but I've been there.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8981.311

Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot these days about this whole thing about proficiency and our expectation of kids nowadays, you know, that we have been told for a long time that we need to guard against kids feeling terrible about themselves. On the other hand, we want them to be proficient.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

8999.736

And what you're really talking about here, if I understand correctly, is proficiency at being human, at being really good at certain things, less good at others. I can also tell any kid, because I was this kid, like in a group of musicians, I'm the least proficient. I mean, you really just don't, talk about wanting someone to do nothing. I'm best off not even playing the triangle.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9018.492

Okay, like just doing nothing would be the best thing I could do to any musical effort. It's just, but I realized that at some point, even though every kid in my school played an instrument, they had like the youth symphony and all that kind of stuff, because it was also a time when I could just kind of relax. Like you don't have to be certainly best at everything.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9038.629

But I also believe that in order to really find what you're kind of quote unquote meant for, you have to try a bunch of things and find out what you're never going to even approach partially skilled at. You still have to try. I guess that's the point. So on the one hand, I guess I'm saying do nothing. On the other hand, I'm saying you still have to try.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

905.918

We can't peer into the future. But it's the not knowing that, you know, really extends our brain resources. And I can imagine that for a kid, seeing their parent upset and then hearing, well, no, I'm okay, I'm okay, would create this kind of open loop where then the kid has to worry about it. Like, when will this come to an end? Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9054.559

I guess you have to try to find out that you're really as bad at music as I found out I am.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9059.042

I'm good with it. I'm good with it. I love music, but I don't need to play it.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9134.86

What's your favorite board game to play as a family?

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9139.821

I don't know it, but I'll check it out.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9159.893

That's a fun game.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9236.024

I love it. We're back to theory versus practice.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9242.068

I feel like as long as there are kids and adults that seem, I want to emphasize seem, to do everything well, the athlete, academic, musician, good dancer, charming with other people, as long as those people exist or seem to exist, we're going to have to all overcome our sense that we should be at least partially good at a wide variety of things, maybe not everything.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

926.6

One question about expressing sadness in front of a child, and if, let's say, somebody expresses why they're sad, is it okay to accept consolation from the kid? Because we hear so much that we shouldn't have to parent as children, we shouldn't have to parent our parents. And this is a big theme, especially on social media nowadays. Like, were you the parent to your parent?

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9275.55

No, I know they don't exist. I know that there are people that apparently are like that. They're fakers. Well, I don't know. I will say that, and this is, I don't get paid to say positive things about the university I work for or not, but I will say occasionally I'll meet a student from Stanford And I'm like, goodness gracious. Like this kid, right, can apparently do everything.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9304.511

Like they're an athlete and they're a musician. They have all these things. There are those people. And I will say, but this is important, the pressure that the perception of those people creates on them Without fail brings them to immense challenge in their life, if not then, later. I've seen it every single time.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9327.794

I know because I grew up in the town where I'm now a professor and I went to school with many people who ended up there or, you know, other places like that. And of course, there are people like that in every environment. They are outliers. They tend to be very salient. We tend to notice them. And they create this, you know, false internal pressure. This is the reason I raise it.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9350.117

And I want to say it's not like they eventually, you know, fail and dissolve into a puddle of their own tears like that. Hopefully they're resilient and they push forward in life and some of them do amazing things and some of them do less amazing things. But the point is that there are people among our species that seem to do many, many things very, very well.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9367.407

And I think when we hold ourselves to that standard, we suffer and we hold ourselves back. I think that, I believe, I just have a central belief that we all do have some unique gifts that we're meant to bring to our life and to the world, and it shows up in different forms. And one of the worst things we can do in trying to find that and express it is trying to be really good at everything.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9390.87

I just think that's the most poisonous idea in the American mindset that we're supposed to be really good at everything. On the other hand, I personally believe that we should try a variety of things so that we experience frustration and fail and eventually find what it is that is, you know, we're quote unquote meant to do. I do.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9410.101

But I feel also very fortunate that I was never really pushed to be excellent at everything. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. But I'm pretty good at sports with my feet. But when I say pretty good, I mean passable.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9420.206

So I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional athlete very, very young. So I think we have to know that we have to play games with our hands and our feet in order to figure that out.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

949.694

You know, were you the one that took out the trash when someone else should have done it and therefore you took on more responsibilities? I don't want kids to think they shouldn't take out the trash, but you know what I mean? But if you're consoling a parent about a lost job,

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9490.853

Oh, goodness. And it's very sad.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9493.695

Very sad.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

95.302

If you can understand this concept and you apply some of the very simple rules and tools that Dr. Kennedy explains during the podcast, I assure you, you can learn many more things much more quickly and with much greater satisfaction, if not during the process, certainly at the end when you master that learning. And those are just a few of the themes that we discussed during today's episode. Again,

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

961.727

If you're the kid, rather, that is sort of the go-between between the parents, sort of acting as therapist, we hear about this a lot, a lot. And I think a lot of people peer into their past and say, yeah, I grew up way too fast.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9687.586

Oh, I really appreciate you sharing. And I want to be clear, if I was at all unclear, that I certainly don't hold up these ultra performers in all domains on a pedestal. I think they're in a very precarious place inside and outside. They've essentially given up all their power and agency to one incoming failure. And maybe they never experience it and they get to the end without having done it.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9709.535

But what a terrible way to live anyway. I've always looked up since I was little to people that really took a unique path. I've always found that they, yes, accomplish tremendous things and they have interesting, sometimes painful flaws. Like I'm a huge fan of the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. Very, very incredible man. Very complicated life.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9732.701

You know, if you read his books, his autobiography, which I highly recommend everybody do if you're interested in science and just animals and a life uniquely lived. He's a really good example. And there are a bunch of other examples that are meaningful to me. Certainly not somebody who, you know, he... couldn't do an experiment to save his life.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

975.136

So on the other hand, I think we would all agree that being an empathic person, teaching our kids that if somebody's crying, you want to walk over to that person, perhaps, and just say, you know, Do you want me to sit with you or maybe do nothing at all? Maybe offer a solution, maybe not, but at least, you know, provide some sort of support that seems healthy.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9751.149

He was moved out of multiple universities and places, you know, very, very complicated character, had a methamphetamine addiction, was a closet homosexual, came out later in life and was then long periods of time on his own. And anyway, had a great relationship later in life. Very interesting person.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9773.78

became that way and found his passion by realizing how terrible he was at certain things, including certain branches of medicine. So I think that trying many things and being really realistic about whether or not something's for us or not, but is the key.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9789.071

But then I guess the question becomes, and this must be so hard from the perspective of parenting, but also just in terms of guiding ourselves through life is, you know, how much friction do we experience before we say, you And I'm cool with that. I love music. But I'm going to put my efforts into these other things. And, you know, this thing comes more easily for me.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9808.299

You know, I do think we have a lot of natural tendencies. And I feel like, especially in the United States, there's been this complicated relationship with parenting and education whereby...

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9816.99

we we don't want to push people to their own you know like suffering and demise but we also have to avoid not pushing them because then they don't ever find what they are proficient in and they don't learn that overcoming friction thing um so it's it's tricky i do believe everyone has a unique expression of themselves in life whatever that is doesn't have to be in professional life but to try a lot of different things and you know how at what point you uh you bail out

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9843.345

I mean, I've had few in my lab, but I've spoken to graduate students and postdocs where I had to say, you know what? I actually had this conversation with a postdoc. I was like, you know what? You're a really good scientist. You're never going to be a professor. Let's get you a job in biotech. And they were like, oh, they thought their whole life they were going to be a professor.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9858.989

I'm like, you're not. And the data are the following, which point to that. And it's kind of devastating. But then years later, they thanked me or they thanked me in that case.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9868.311

A few others probably cursed me, but yeah. So how do you know when to keep pushing your kid to even engage in something? Like maybe they're the kid that always is picked last for the team, but you know they should play sports.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

9901.553

I guess I grew up in a town where a lot of kids got pushed.

Huberman Lab

Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

996.435

But the basic question is, should parents accept consolation from children when the parent is sad or experiencing some other negative emotion?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Lane Norton. Dr. Lane Norton did his training in biochemistry and nutritional sciences, and is one of the world's foremost experts in exercise and nutrition.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10061.432

Yeah, I'd be extremely hungry. I mean, I consume artificial sweeteners, for the record. But there are enough data, and I have enough experience with them to know that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10070.572

Sometimes they will curb my appetite, like they'll get me over the bump, but I've come to associate, it's probably just pure paired placebo association, if there is such a thing, where if I drink a Diet Coke, pretty soon after that, I want to eat something. Now I've challenged that by not eating something because I have pretty good discipline and it passes. But I think I've come to associate that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10092.282

the sweet taste with wanting to eat something. And nothing to me is more delicious. Well, there are many things there, like a diet coconut slice of pizza if I'm in New York, or a diet coconut burger, or, you know, there are these food associations. But I don't think, for instance, that sweet taste necessarily stimulates appetite.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10108.879

But I can imagine if I only had, as you said, 1200 calories a day to eat, and I'm getting You know, 400 of those calories from sugar. Like you said, there's not going to be much. I better be eating a lot of broccoli as well or else I'm going to be pretty hungry. Just based on my learned relationships between sweet taste and food consumption.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10169.631

No, but I know about the Twinkie defense.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10417.186

There does seem to be a kind of a requirement in books, sometimes even in podcasts, or to take a stance, like to be anti-something. Because saying, you know, what I personally believe based on my read of the data is that most people should strive to get anywhere from 70 to 90% of their food from non-processed, minimally processed quality foods, and then allow some space for the

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10444.941

you know, some processed food, highly processed foods and sweets and things like that, but mostly to get the macros right, as we've described them earlier. And what the range will depend on age will depend on activity level will depend on prior health history.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10459.77

I mean, there are some people who have enough issues that relate to diet and lack of exercise that when I've seen them get it right and undergo such incredible transformations that like I also know these people's capacity to fall off the train. Right. And you want to say, you know, maybe make that number a hundred percent. So you never go back.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10480.684

Cause I've seen them slip before and then, and then the guilt and then they come back, excuse me. So there are two ways to look at it. One is you tell people, listen, you don't have to be perfect. Right. Cause if, if perfection is the goal, you're going to fall off. But then there are those individuals like severe alcoholics who quit drinking.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10494.934

You don't say like, Hey, like you can have a beer on Christmas. You don't say that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10499.137

It's all or none. But anyway, here we're getting into the psychology of it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10594.062

Yeah. Oh, and, and everyone struggles with different things and everyone finds certain things easier. Like I, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm an adult, so I can have a drink or two. I just don't like it. So everyone assumes because I did this episode on alcohol that I'm like anti-alcohol.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10607.424

Like I'm like, if you're an adult, you're non-alcoholic, you don't have issues with, you know, alcohol use disorder or something like, you might guess, like just know the data. Right. But there are certain things like steak, I'm never giving up. Like you could tell me it takes 10 years off my life and I'm not going to give it up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10625.166

I'll do other things to offset whatever that, you know, decrease in longevity might be. I don't think that that's a real thing, but I'm just not going to give it up. It's central to my enjoyment of life. Period. Speaking of which, when, if one really wants to wade into the waters of strong opinions and conflicting data, we covered this a bit last time you were on the podcast, but

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10648.601

the questions were replete with requests to discuss seed oils. Seed oils. And I must say this whole thing about seed oils has really gotten in my head. Even though I'm a scientist, like the other day I went to my sister's for dinner and she made a really nice dinner. It was from our mom's birthday. And then she made a really nice salad and I love fruits and vegetables. So it was like salad.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10671.91

And then I looked and I was like, she's made this out with like grapeseed oil. And I was like, why do you use grapeseed oil instead of olive oil? And she's like, well, I ran out of olive oil. And I found myself like looking at the salad like, is this safe to eat? I was like, I heard your voice in my ear. I also heard Paul's voice in my ear. Saladinos, all these people.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10688.098

And I thought, well, I ate the salad, by the way. I really enjoyed it. It was good. Grape seed oil doesn't taste as good to me as olive oil. I generally try and use olive oil, butter, things like that when I cook. But what's the deal with seed oils? I understand that they are calorically dense. You told us that last time.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10707.209

I understand people tend to over consume them and then blame them for a bunch of things that are not related to their seed oil-ness rather than their calorie containing-ness. These aren't real words, of course, but you get the idea. But are there any data out there that have your ears kind of pricked up to the possibility that assuming equal calories, that there might be something

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10730.799

bad about seed oils or is there zero? And there's no pressure here to answer one way or the other. Not that you would respond to pressure from me anyway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10809.351

What about swapping with monounsaturated fats? Why are we talking about seed oils versus lard and butter? Why aren't we talking about seed oils versus olive oil?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10841.954

Terrible way for me to pose the question. Is there any reason to think, like for the person who isn't sure about seed oils because they've just heard enough negative things, even if there's no basis for it, like me, who's like, I like butter. And I also assume that eating too much butter might not be good for me just because I'm a rational human being based on my read of the data.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10862.378

Anyway, so I have some butter, yes, but I like olive oil. Olive oil is tasty. I'm told it's good for me. Is there any knowledge about anything in olive oil that says, listen, even if you consume it in concert with your caloric thresholds, meaning you're not eating too many calories, is there anything bad in olive oil?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

10906.467

People on X. When I put out questions for your coming on this episode, literally there were multiple people that claim that you are paid off by this, by them, by big seed oil. And I was just like, I have to laugh out loud. I was like, there might be a lot of companies that are large that make seed oils, but I I guarantee they're not paying Lane Norton to say what he's saying.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1102.083

But yeah, I would agree. I think that people make errors. I do think that a lot of quote unquote bad papers, or let's just say false conclusions arise from elimination of data that did not fit the person's desired outcome. And the reason I say that is I think it's impossible to control for.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11048.056

Okay. So that would be trading out butter and lard and meat fats for more olive oil.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1122.758

So you've got the student or postdoc doing the experiment, the results don't come out the way they would have preferred. And then they're, you know, let's just say I've observed before, never in my laboratory, fortunately, but

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11319.504

You just described the way that I eat and that anytime a friend of mine, and this happens a lot, It comes to me and has, you know, 20 to 50 pounds to lose. Well, make it as easy on yourself as possible. You can eat meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, and that's all you're going to do for two months. And most of those guys in this case, they were guys, lost weight.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11343.055

a substantial amount of weight and kept it off. They all exercised as well. And of course it's caloric restriction related, right? But they're not touching pasta. They're not touching bread. They asked me all the things that, can I do this? And I just said, listen, if it wasn't in the list I just gave you, you're not eating it. It sounds restrictive.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1135.154

cases where people come up with reasons why that particular experiment wasn't valid because, you know, the mice were initially sick or the drug, the lot of drug that they used wasn't, it was heading towards expiration. They come up with reasons to exclude rather than outright data fabrication where people literally create results that aren't there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11358.568

The good news about something like that is that fruit generally tastes good and steak is very satiating. It's delicious. If you don't like meat, I suppose this wouldn't work, but... But I don't think there's anything magic about that diet. It just gets people below their maintenance calories with relative ease.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11445.713

Eating more fruits and vegetables can only be good for you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

115.186

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1155.892

And, you know, there are a number of different examples throughout history that where people have done that, but I like to think that those are more recent.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1169.191

Usually end up reading about that in the form of retractions in journals that come out nowadays more close to the publications because of AI's ability to scan images and things of that sort.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11904.312

Thank you for that very thorough and very clear answer, and I just will highlight that You ate a steak last night. So you were by no means anti-meat or saturated fat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11918.184

Not to aggravate them just because they stuck to their principles. You stuck to yours.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11931.854

Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's talk about artificial sweeteners. Sweet. Those are the other people that pay me. Um, that's right. Uh, he's kidding folks. Good. Um, you and I got into it. It wasn't a scrap.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11949.302

We got into a little disagreement about this, um, years ago, so long ago that it's probably not even worth mentioning that, you know, I was, um, somewhat enticed by the data from Dana smalls laboratory. Then at Yale, I think now she's up at McGill, um, looking at some kind of Pavlovian conditioning of artificial sweeteners. So basically, um,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11968.047

Children, children in that case, consuming a high amount of I think it was either sucralose or saccharin in combination with a meal, kind of standard meal and look at the insulin response and then removing the food component sometime later. And what they essentially observed was a conditioned insulin response. So then you then have these kids just have the the

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

11997.506

sweet tasting, non caloric drink minus the food. And they still and they then saw an elevated insulin response. In other words, the same way that Pavlov got dogs to salivate in response to a bell. that was paired with food, then you remove the food and then they just simply salivate in response to the bell.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12012.239

The idea was, well, maybe you can create a conditioned Pavlovian-like response to artificial sweeteners. Okay, I thought it was kind of a cool study. Looking back, I probably wouldn't have covered it the way I did because it's not a typical scenario. I think the more important questions are,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12030.043

Is there any evidence that artificial and low calorie or zero calorie sweeteners like Stevia, we have to be very careful here, that they are somehow dangerous in any of the following ways? One, do they alone increase insulin to levels that are problematic? Two, do they stimulate appetite in a way that's problematic, independent of insulin or maybe as a consequence of insulin?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12058.602

And then three, what's the story with their potential effect on the gut microbiome? I think those are the three categories that come to mind. There are probably other categories. And I just want to say, for the record, then and now, I'll consume some aspartame every once in a while in the form of a Diet Coke.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12072.328

Stevia seems to be in a lot of the things that I consume, and I don't have a problem with that. So I'm not anti-artificial or low-calorie sweetener. for reasons that are entirely personal and have no scientific basis whatsoever. I avoid things with sucralose in them. I don't really like the taste of it. And I have kind of an aversion to it for an interesting reason.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12098.868

Yeah. If I see something, I'm like, eh, no. Aspartame, fine. Stevia gets the thumbs up by me. And I will choose low calorie or zero calorie sodas or drinks or energy drinks. when I have the option to have something with sugar. It's just kind of, but I'm not anti-sugar either. I just developed this as a habit. I prefer to get my calories from food.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1212.427

Well, and what nobody talks about where it's not discussed enough is that a lot of times the way the paper is written poses a question after the results are in. I mean, and this is a really a not correct way to do science. I mean, in clinical trials... one has to wager a hypothesis from the outset. And you go test that hypothesis. You're not asking a question.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12126.214

Steak, strawberries, blueberries, oatmeal, rice, butter, olive oil, and all the other delicious, wonderful things, as opposed to a Coke. I'd rather just have a diet Coke and eat a bit more steak.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12204.172

So we have insulin, we have, does it stimulate appetite in ways that may or may not be related to insulin? You ruled out insulin increase. So like, could there be a pairing of like, okay, every time I eat, I have a diet soda. Then if I have a diet soda on its own, does it stimulate the desire to eat? a la the Dana Small study. And by the way, that study was halted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12226.308

This is the problem with that study is it was being done in kids. The increases in insulin that they saw in a subset of the kids were so dramatic. This is the way she described it in a talk, so I feel comfortable saying this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12236.912

Maybe she's changed her tune, but in this online talk, an academic talk, the increases in insulin were so dramatic that they were concerned about the kids becoming pre-diabetic. So they halted the study, which means the totality of the data never came in, means it's hard to draw a conclusion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12349.73

Yeah, and usually, as I recall, a pretty significant amount of diet drink, like two liters a day even. Like the person will carry around a liter or a two liter of diet drink and sip on it whenever they get thirsty or hungry.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12362.454

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1237.64

Right, exactly. Whereas in more typical laboratory science, people will design an experiment. They have hypotheses. But then depending on how the experiments work out or don't work out, oftentimes they'll change the question, they'll modify the hypotheses. And one would, as a reader, as a journal, as a reviewer, one will never know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12429.946

Well, I'm not quitting, but that's ridiculous.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1259.119

And so that's a slight of hand that is, I would say, unfortunately, is very common in better science.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12675.482

Are you saying that the potential that those subjects – had to believe that zero-calorie sweeteners or low-calorie sweeteners could be bad for the microbiome, might have actually made their gut microbiome more dysbiotic?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12711.328

And only for sucralose. So stevia, no change.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12718.954

Saccharin and sucralose are the ones that seem to always show the biggest effects, quote unquote. And I don't know how often those are used in diet drinks these days. I mean, less and less. I mean, it's usually aspartame, stevia, more in the kind of wellness, health, fitness crowd drinks.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12809.643

Yeah, the names of bacteria are really difficult to pronounce. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12911.178

It's also safer to when the media warns people off things as opposed to towards things, because if they push people towards things, there's more liability. Right. Push people away from things where rarely are they responsible for the opportunity cost there or the trade off as you as you refer to it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12950.823

I've used it a little bit.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

12952.545

It's a great tool.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13090.703

Love it. You've dealt with some injuries. You've dealt with pain. You talked a little bit about how reducing your stress and interpretation of the pain could help. I want to talk about pain and pain management. But before we do that, a more general question that relates is about recovery tools. Many, many people want to know, okay, if we were to create the pyramid of recovery,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

131.9

Yerba mate has long been my preferred source of caffeine, not just because it tastes great and provides that stimulant effect that caffeine provides for focus and alertness, but its other many benefits that are unique to yerba mate, such as regulating blood sugar, high antioxidant content, and it can improve digestion. And of course, I drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13113.709

the hierarchy of tools for recovery after training. And here, let's change out or let's use resistance training and cardiovascular training interchangeably. Some people run hard, other people lift hard or do both. From the moment that session ends, what do you have in your kit of things to maximize recovery over the shortest possible amount of time?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13136.611

And I can immediately think of sleep as critical, but what are the things that you can do starting from that final repetition?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13181.55

You could do it immediately after you can.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13184.67

Absolutely. Quick. I'm going to layer in an additional question. Is there any evidence that fruit is not good at replenishing glycogen as compared to starch? Because the reason I ask this is that, you know, like if I finish a workout and I have some like a whey protein shake with a

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13204.346

Assuming equal calories, is that going to replenish glycogen the same way as if I have a couple scoops of whey protein and a bowl of oatmeal or rice?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13437.105

Okay. And then typically I'll do a meal that includes some starch a little bit later in the day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13442.067

Great. So nutrition post-workout or in the hour or two post-workout, making sure you eat enough in the following hours. Do you include any kind of stress down regulation? Are you... Do you do anything else besides nutrition and sleep to accelerate recovery? Sure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13478.159

Viewing horizons, we know. Put you into panoramic vision. We know this from stuff my lab has done.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13484.483

Oh, yeah. Panoramic vision is a – will come off the accelerator of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which is just nerd speak to say enjoy those sunrises and sunsets. They are very calm.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13504.915

You don't need my approval.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13524.045

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13568.35

Awesome. Earlier, we were talking about protein. Actually, several times we talked about protein, and I neglected to ask a question that is very timely because I just did an episode, a solo episode of this podcast recently about skin health and appearance. And I looked at the data on... ingesting collagen. It could be from bone broth or other sources of collagen.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13588.829

Typically, it's powdered collagens, anywhere from 5 to 30 grams of collagen. And I was kind of surprised at the results. I also talked to some dermatologists. Basically, the results say in these papers, the meta-analysis I looked at, and in speaking with these dermatologists that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13607.045

The conclusion was that regular consumption of collagen on the order of anywhere from five to 30 grams per day with a little bit of vitamin C, a couple hundred milligrams of vitamin C for whatever pathway-related reason, seemed to improve skin appearance. Fewer wrinkles, reduction in wrinkles, more skin tautness, appearance of moisture, et cetera. These are subjective measures, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13628.574

I don't think they were calipering the skin and looking at tensile strength and things like that. But people felt they looked younger, et cetera. And-

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13637.349

I was surprised, really surprised because without making this too long a question or story, a few years back, there were some claims by not to be named individuals on Instagram saying, well, if you want to improve the function of your liver, eat liver. If you want to improve the function of your heart, eat heart. And you and I were just like, no. Okay, you're the nutrition biochemistry guy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13656.936

I'm the neuroscience guy. I have a little bit of a background in cold physiology that I rarely talk about, but in any case... 05.20 But you know physiology. 05.21 Yeah. I mean, there is... We both agree.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13666.519

There's like zero evidence that ingesting a protein, which of course is broken down into its amino acid constituents in the gut, would somehow lead to selective shuttling of those amino acids from liver that you ingest to your liver. That just is like a... There's only one word for that. It's like a crazy unsubstantiated... 05.25 Right. claim.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13684.664

And then some papers were sent my way, which were in a different language. And like I was trying to anyway, zero minus one evidence, as I would say. And yet the whole notion that consuming collagen protein, which Dr. Gabrielle Lyon told me is actually a pretty low quality protein on the kind of protein quality scale. It's like tendon and toenails and all this stuff. Gross.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13704.913

But yeah, that's what it is. Somehow leads to improvements in actual collagen, which is, of course, is a native protein of the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13713.769

So I went digging, I just wanna, before I get your answer, I went digging and I found, again, a not to be named individual has this kind of wild story on the internet that, ah, well, this is because it's broken down into the dipeptides and tripeptides in the gut that,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13730.425

somehow inform the body that there's an injury in the collagen and we have quote unquote breakdown of collagen aka injury i don't know breakdown of collagen and elastin in the skin all the time and then the body recognizes the presence of those dipeptides and tripeptides so little groups of twos or three peptides not just one and sends those selectively to the skin and so it's like once again it's like it makes sense as a mechanism if it were true but at

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13756.846

I just had to like roll my eyes. I was like, oh no. Okay, I'm going to pitch this over to Lane as I am right now. So Lane, take it away. What's the story? Does ingesting collagen improve skin appearance? And do we have any idea what the mechanism might be? Sorry for the long question, folks, but I had to set the stage.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13780.74

We're both scientists.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

13869.834

So it's very low quality.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14109.112

So why aren't we just suggesting that people take glycine instead of collagen?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14169.143

Thank you for that very thorough answer and very clear answer. If nothing else, it tells us that Collagen protein is going to be least ideal for post-workout protein because of the fact that it lacks significant amounts of leucine, et cetera. So it might be good for skin. Definitely not a great protein for dietary protein reasons.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14216.265

And a quality whey protein would be the highest leucine available?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14221.667

Eggs, whey protein.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14233.135

Great. Well, Dr. Lane Norton, thank you for coming back here for the second time on the podcast. I must say it's a true pleasure to sit down with you and discuss training, nutrition, supplementation, recovery, pain management, stress, life advice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14256.158

for so many reasons a you're you know a serious scientist you know in our business of science um that that that really means something you're serious about the science and you're a light-hearted guy in the right context and you're but you're you're a serious scientist you you believe in the process and you provide the nuance even though that might not be convenient

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14278.588

to what somebody wants or convenient to the discussion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14284.452

I'd rather this stuff be so simple, you know? Right. Sure. Sure. You're like the rest of us. And at the same time, I really appreciate it because we are now also colleagues in the public health, public facing landscape, social media, it's sometimes called, but a lot of landscapes, podcasts, YouTube, et cetera. And- It's required. It's needed that people like you exist.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14309.45

And I will go so far to say that, you know, and I'm not alone in this, right, because I've talked about this with with Rogan and with Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, excuse me, and others, you know, in an ocean of noise. some of which has validity, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14327.131

But in an ocean of noise about nutrition and training and all these different things and how to evidence-based blank and science-based that, you really clearly are pure signal. Like you're gonna take as much time and as much effort to communicate the real signal. And you today have really defined for us, for you, what is real versus not real versus a maybe.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14352.259

And I just want people to hear that loud and clear because I think sometimes people pay attention to how spirited you are and they miss the fact that in that spirited nature and in the nuance and in the, look, we're both long-winded at times. Like I know...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14369.44

because I know this for myself, but I certainly know it for you, that that comes from a place of respect for the science and respect for your audience. That is not being dismissive. That's actually respect for them. It would be disrespectful to just give them the answer they want or give them a quick answer without the explanation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14385.706

So I just really want to extend like a real voice of gratitude for you, for what you did for us today, just far too much to list off. It's all so valuable, just so, so valuable. And also what you do on social media and the way you do it. And look, I also really love and respect your fighting spirit because you're fighting for truth, you're fighting for good.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14406.462

And I also love the posts and the pictures of your kids. They're delightful. And it's great to see that the balance in your life you've created. So I could go on and on, but I'm going to cut this short by just saying A giant thank you for being the signal among all the noise.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14502.95

It's been a true pleasure and you're absolutely more than net positive on the world. And we'll just have to have you come back and talk to us again before long. Thank you so much.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14516.419

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Lane Norton. To learn more about his work, please see the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14534.788

And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14545.211

If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14563.645

This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14583.342

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14605.824

And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14619.818

If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes what we call protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep. things like deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14640.17

We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more. To sign up, again, at completely zero cost, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu function in the corner, scroll down to newsletter, and you provide your email. I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Lane Norton.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

14660.355

And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

152.973

While there are a lot of different choices out there in terms of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite is Matina yerba mate because it's made with the highest quality organic ingredients and it has a very rich but clean taste. And given Matina's great taste and commitment to quality, I recently became a part owner in the company and I've helped design some of their drink products.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1603.686

Great guy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1663.795

It sounded like a worse and worse idea by the moment.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

172.023

In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero-sugar cold brew yerba mate, which has a slight taste of lemon, and I personally helped develop that drink. I drink two cans of Matina yerba mate cold brew in the morning, and I often drink a third can in the early afternoon. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash huberman.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1729.378

Maybe explain what cohort data are. Comparing two groups.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1742.341

These people decided to be vegan. These people decided to be, let's just say omnivores.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

1750.464

And they weren't assigned to this experiment. They agreed to join the experiment. They've been eating this way for a while. Right. You ask them a bunch of questions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

190.86

Right now, Matina is offering a free one-pound bag of loose-leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. You can also find Matina at all Sun Life locations and Erewhon locations.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2025.159

Right, consuming five to 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day is going to benefit strength and muscle mass and likely cognition to some extent. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2045.027

The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps you may have in your diet and provide support for a demanding life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2062.121

For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods and minimally processed foods, which I do for most of my food intake, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning, and again in the afternoon or evening.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2082.093

When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy, my immune system, and my gut microbiome. These are all critical to brain function, mood, physical performance, and much more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim their special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

210.533

So please be sure to look for it both at Sun Life and at Erewhon. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2102.702

Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2110.984

I wouldn't even call it a diatribe. I think for those listening, this is pure gold because... Never before, certainly on this podcast or other podcasts, has anyone ever really spelled out how to discern differences in quality of evidence. And it's mostly a free world, most places, and people can do what they want, but I think they need to decide what their thresholds are for quality.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

229.145

One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2324.738

A typical graduate career.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

246.595

Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2523.64

I love that description, but now my curiosity is peaked and you got to tell me. So if 90 minutes after ingesting protein, protein synthesis peaks and then it drops to baseline at three hours, but leucine, one of the key amino acids in mTOR, which is in the pathway of cellular growth and protein synthesis are still elevated at three hours. What is the conclusion that explains the discrepancy?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

26.075

He is also an expert in the topic of supplementation and other tools to augment health. Today, we discuss a large number of very important topics in these categories, and we start the conversation by establishing what Dr. Norton's thresholds are for what he accepts as evidence, in particular, actionable evidence.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

263.004

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2657.674

Yeah, and if people didn't follow that, don't worry about it. What Lane's describing is that the presence of a bunch of molecules involved in protein synthesis is necessary but not sufficient for the protein synthesis. Right. A few other things have to happen. Correct. And apparently those other things are not happening after... 120 minutes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2783.711

Right, because for many decades, it has been – purported believed and propagated that the maximum amount of protein that you can utilize after a meal is 30 grams became the holy number. And this study essentially showed that more than 30 grams can be used not just as energy, but for the sake of protein synthesis in muscle. Correct.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

280.408

If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Maui Nui venison.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2808.069

And it, and how did that study land with you, given that it's one study without going into all the details that did that inspire you to change anything about your protein intake after training?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2824.266

Yeah, why does that not surprise me?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2879.69

now. And in the continuous feeding groups that, uh, do you recall what duration they were eating their meals over? Was it probably 12 hours or so?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2892.822

I'd have to go back more than eight hours for sure. You know, I'm so glad we're landing here because my first, um, let's just call it sort of operational or actionable question, which came from, um,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2905.896

you know, asking on social media for questions for you was many, many people, if not in the thousands, asked how to make sure that they're getting enough protein if they're doing something like intermittent fasting. And I myself fall into this category. I don't do it for any specific purpose.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2924.252

This was long before Sachin Panda started doing his work on time-restricted feeding, aka intermittent fasting. But I don't tend to want to eat any food until about 11 a.m., Occasionally I wake up hungry like this morning and I had some eggs, I was particularly hungry, but I think that's representative of a lot of people. I want hydration and caffeine in the morning.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2944.442

I want to train in the morning and then I want to eat pretty soon after I train. But what that means is that I'm eating during an eight to nine hour feeding window. And if I only manage two meals in there and a snack and I can only assimilate or excuse me, I can only put 30 grams of protein per meal toward protein synthesis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2964.361

We have to be careful not about using it for energy, but toward protein synthesis. Does that mean that I'm not going to hit my target of one gram of protein per pound of desired lean body mass? Because I'm 100 kilograms. I weigh about 220 pounds. I can easily eat 220 grams of protein in a nine hour period. Like give me three ribeyes. I'll eat all three. I love ribeye steak. Right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

2986.518

But the question is, can I use that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

300.905

Maui Nui venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3047.52

In what direction?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

313.522

That protein provides critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also promotes overall health given the importance of muscle as an organ. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3185.86

One day no eating, next day eat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3188.041

Brutal. They did. Or at least for somebody like me. I can't think of anything worse. I'd rather fast for three days in a row and then eat for four days in a row simply because I know that by day two, it's probably going to get easier, not harder, but on, off, on. Fasting, eating has got to be just torturous.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3238.034

Also, can you imagine training on a day of complete fasting? Three hours after that, you're going to be dying. And then you can say, well, you could just train on the days when you eat. But then if you ever train legs hard, which I know you do, or if anyone does, and then the next day you're not going to eat anything. The day after training legs properly, my appetite's increased.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3295.886

And so for you just personally, what time of day do you wake up and when is your first meal?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

331.643

Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein to calorie ratio, such that getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess amount of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. I personally like and eat all of those.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3326.525

And does each one of your meals include approximately 30 plus grams of quality protein?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3332.389

Some starchy carbohydrate, fibrous carbohydrate, and some fat?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3392.813

So you're- Not everyone's watching. I just drew an asymptote. Right, yeah. An asymptote plot. But for those not watching, just think about a plot quickly rising very, very high and then essentially stays stable at the high level. Yeah. Maybe with a slight bit of taper.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3418.398

Okay, so you're running in the opposite direction.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3420.04

Still asymptote going from high to low.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3421.822

So asymptote can go from low to high, it can go from high to low.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

352.364

In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or simply on the go, they have a very convenient Maui Nui venison jerky, which has 10 grams of quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3602.505

One gram per pound of body weight, which is what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon also essentially recommended.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3628.89

And we should probably point out, not just for muscle building, um, unless you disagree, uh,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3634.941

and feel free to, of course, not that I need to tell you that, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, when she was here, made a really key point, which is that ingesting sufficient quality protein each day isn't just about building muscle, even for folks that don't want to build muscle, and perhaps even particularly for women who assume that, you know,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3657.003

building muscle can be a runaway process that maybe they're going to build too much muscle. That's a false assumption, of course, that ingesting one gram of protein per pound of body weight or ideal body weight is going to be beneficial because it's going to improve muscle quality, one's own muscle quality, the health of the muscular tissue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3675.465

And then she did an excellent job of relating the health of muscular tissue, skeletal muscle that is, to overall health and longevity. So I just raised that because I know that many people listening to this probably want to add a little bit of muscle here or there. Some perhaps want to keep the muscle they've got and lose fat. And some, of course, want to add a lot of muscle.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3693.697

But it sounds like the recommendation is always the same. Since we need to eat sooner or later, one gram of quality protein per pound of lean body mass or current body weight or desired body weight, that's going to be a good starting place.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

372.994

Responsible population management of the access deer on the island of Maui means that they will not go beyond harvest capacity. Signing up for a membership is therefore the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3727.486

With weights and lift them in between stretches. No, I'm just kidding.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

392.419

Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Lane Norton. Dr. Lane Norton, welcome back. Thanks for having me back. Before we jump in,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3938.735

I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3957.89

Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3975.687

To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

3993.925

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4010.816

since we're sort of in this realm of protein, maybe we build out from there, because a lot of questions related to something akin to the following. So, okay, so somebody strives to get one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight per day. And I realized that whether somebody follows a pseudo intermittent fasting thing where their first meal does a

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4034.721

you know, around 11 and they end, you know, and they finish up eating around 8 PM or a more traditional eating schedule really is just the addition of one more meal, like in the morning. It's like whether or not you eat breakfast. And of course, some people shift it the other way. They start with breakfast and they don't eat dinner, but

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4049.153

Um, I would argue that in order to, if you have kids or a social life of any kind, the, the most people can deal with, um, sitting across the table with someone just having a cup of coffee for breakfast, but it's sort of awkward. You limit yourself a lot in life. If you, if you can't eat dinner with other people, I don't know, at least.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

405.129

I want to get your stance on what constitutes evidence, because I think a big reason why you are considered one of the, if not the most trusted person in the realm of nutrition and training is that you set a very high bar for what you consider science-based fact that motivates action. So to just kind of break this down based on my read of the landscape online,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4226.253

Great. You answered a future question right there. You're telepathic. That's what you didn't know about them. The So the scenario here is whether or not meals are distributed evenly through the awake day or stacked a little bit more toward the morning or stacked a little bit more toward the evening. If somebody gets that one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4253.464

then they need to make up the rest of their calories with other stuff. And we have, broadly speaking, starches, fibrous fruits and vegetables, starches, and of course fats. And weight gain and weight loss, I think we both would agree, or weight maintenance, is going to largely be dictated at this point by whether or not you consume more calories than you burn or not.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4279.702

So assuming somebody is getting that one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight, Is there any data that support, or do you believe just by your own experience that there's some value in stacking the starchy carbohydrates toward the earlier part of the day versus the later part of the day? And this has been an ongoing debate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4299.053

Like I, for instance, like a nearly pure protein and fat meal for the first meal, plus maybe a salad, some fibrous carbohydrates. And then as they get towards evening, I like more starches. And I actually taper off the protein. I find personally that matches what I need to do with my brain. I'm more alert when I'm drinking caffeine and hydrating on a backdrop of slightly lowered carbohydrates.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4319.442

But then as I get towards evening, taper off the caffeine, of course, for me, because I want to sleep well, start ingesting some more starches. It's not starch heavy, but I sleep like a baby. But everyone would tell me and does tell me eating starches late in the day is going to make me fat. Eating starches late in the day is going to do all sorts of terrible things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4339.752

I find the exact opposite for me. So is there any real evidence that where one places their starches throughout the day matters? And let's just forget resistance training for the moment because there is this post-training window where if I train first thing in the morning, I will eat starches at that time. But let's just remove resistance training for the moment.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

435.595

It seems that there's a group of people, I don't know what to call them, purists or something, who, unless there's a randomized controlled trial, so that means in humans, or several, that points in a particular direction, they are very unlikely to adopt a new practice, say removing a given food or nutrient, adding a given food or nutrient, training a certain way, not training a certain way.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4372.894

Thank you, thank you. I knew I brought you here today for reasons. No, I brought you here for many reasons.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

44.047

So what follows is a description of what Dr. Norton really believes is worth paying attention to versus what he believes is worth ignoring in the realms of nutrition, training, and supplementation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4406.221

And could I add, in terms of not focusing on a blade of grass, but something that I consider a major lever, if eating fewer carbohydrates in the afternoon and evening doesn't impede your sleep, then you're okay. But I would argue if anything is interfering with your sleep on a consistent basis, you've got a serious problem.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

462.944

Okay, that's one group. Then there are the people who, if they are told something could be of value, they hear it's worked very well for somebody, maybe they see some before and afters, and it gets mapped to a mechanism

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4643.256

Yeah, I would say eating, eating the way I eat now, I'm leaner at forty nine even than I was ten years ago or ten years before that. I was pretty lean then. And I don't put a ton of attention to tracking calories, although and I want to be very, very clear this I was not paid to say this like I I've purchased and use Lane's carbon app.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4663.783

He happens to be wearing a shirt that says carbon today, but I've talked about this before on other on other podcasts and social media. And it's absolutely true that there's no endorsement relationship. But I love the app because that was really the first time probably since college. So I started lifting when I was 16. Running and lifting has always been my thing since I was 16.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4685.412

But since college that I – used a tool, in this case, Carbon, to basically track what I'm eating, exactly what I'm eating. And what I like about it is that I can just click on different boxes of things within the app. And really, it makes it very easy to say, oh, I ate this thing, white rice from this package. It generally knows products. It knows brands.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4712.411

And it did a really good job of letting me check in and just see how many calories I was consuming, how much protein, how much fat, and from what sources. But one of the major takeaways that at least I got from carbon was that you can arrange your diet any number of different ways.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4726.557

In fact, it has like a really nice little slider where you can put in, you know, you want to eat more carbohydrates and less protein even, or you want to have a vegetarian diet, which I don't. I'm an omnivore. I'm an omnivore. My dad's Argentine. I like... I like meat. I like meat. I don't even really like fish that much or chicken.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4741.903

I just like, I like eating meat and eggs, like my preferred sources and whey protein. Okay, fine. But you can arrange things within the context of different types of diets. And I think there's real value to tracking precisely what one eats for even short periods of time. And then I confess, I stopped using the app for a bit, then I went back to it, you know, and not because things went adrift.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4764.813

I think some people really need that consistent checking. Other people... need to perhaps just kind of eyeball it for themselves. But for me, I've found that knowing exactly what I'm doing for some period of time allows me to explore things in a way that's really effective. And so I just want to give a nod to Carbon. And I don't do product endorsements on this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4788.79

I do ad reads and that kind of thing for things I love. But I say that because I think it lands squarely in the context of what we're talking about, which is that I know what works for me. I also know that some people really love like a giant carb meal in the morning. Some people don't like meat.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

479.161

that exists in humans and animals, like, oh, there's this molecule, and if this molecule increases, X, Y, and Z happens, and training in this way or eating this way increases that molecule, for instance, but no randomized control trial, then they're willing to try it or adopt it. And then there's a third, probably a fourth category as well, where people say, They don't trust science anyway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4807.26

And I think what's so beautiful about the way that you've been talking about science and nutrition in particular over the last few years and still here now is that you don't really seem to care whether or not people are vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or even carnivore, dare I say. It's just a matter of how people are couching the advice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4824.79

And the reason I keep coming back to this is that I really think that you, this discussion, but you in particular, are best poised in this whole field of public-facing health nutrition advice to really change the way that the messaging occurs and the way that people hear that messaging. And I say that with the utmost respect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4845.102

Because most people are not going to go read the meta-analyses.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4848.383

And most people don't know how to parse data. But I think that paying attention to the words that are spoken right before the advice should be – we need to come up with something like that. It's like the Norton method. Pay attention to the words provided right before the advice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4952.078

And you're not on TRT.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4953.638

We need to distinguish this because people nowadays like kind of put TRT – well, as long as it's keeping someone's testosterone in the normal reference range, which is somewhere between 300 and 1,200 nanograms per deciliter, then they're like – They're not – you've never injected a synthetic version of a hormone.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4987.035

Yeah, you don't need it. You're well – you're on the upper – you're high normal.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

499.802

Science is flawed or the controls required to design a really good experiment are so constrained that they don't mimic the real world well enough. And so they're really just interested in what works. So they look to people that seem to have achieved the results they want. feel free to add another group, but which group would you consider yourself in personally?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

4991.398

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5121.993

And you enjoy resistance training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5124.735

I love it. Do you do cardiovascular defined as because people get I'm starting to catch flack these days when I say cardio, believe it or not. repetitive motion movement designed to elevate your heart rate for 12 minutes or more?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

522.401

And then where does your evidence that you put out online and today come from? And I already know the answer to the last question, but I think it was important to kind of spell out the landscape.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5306.771

I would argue it might be related to you're not getting sick very often. You know, it's very clear that activation of the sympathetic nervous system is one main driver of the immune system. This is why often people... observe that they go through a very stressful period of life and then they go on vacation and they get sick or they're taking care of a loved one.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5325.406

And, you know, that person either gets better or passes away or, you know, there's some ending to that caretaking and then they get sick.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5381.951

When you think about human evolution, I mean, these are just so stories. Anytime people talk about human evolution, by the way, like no one really knows. But the idea that, you know, if there was a famine or you need to take care of children in famine, the idea that you would be more vulnerable to disease at those moments, sure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5396.359

But it's also true that the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, activate certain components of the immune system that protect you against things. I mean, it's not going to protect you against everything, but it's when you relax and rest finally, that you are more vulnerable to incoming infections.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5455.442

It makes sense. I mean, those catecholamines, I mean, there are other molecules involved too, but that, you know... Dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine cocktail is driving us forward in motion and thinking all the time. And if you're putting thoughts into one set of things, they're not going elsewhere. Like you said, it's all trade-offs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5575.139

Just like nutrition, just like training.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

56.195

So you can be certain that as we start to go through the topics of sugar, GLP-1 agonists, things like Ozempic, artificial sweeteners, whether you should train to failure or not during your resistance training sessions, how much volume of training you need to do, cardiovascular training and its different forms in terms of how they benefit health span and lifespan and body composition, protein and its different sources, and on and on.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5722.75

That's a very… But these individuals had not trained previously.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5850.272

They seem to enjoy life. I have a grandfather on one side that died earlier, but a grandfather on the other side who lived into his 90s and he ate a steak every day. He smoked till pretty late in life before he eventually quit. He had... Ice cream dessert after every dinner. He's Argentine, so they stack their meals toward the end of the day, definitely. He liked walking.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5874.121

I guess the point is that he was always interested in what was in the newspapers, but he wouldn't get riled up about it. He liked walking. He really enjoyed life. Like if there's one key characteristic to describe him is he really enjoyed life. Now, he didn't take the best care of himself in the sense that had he perhaps never smoked or quit earlier. or dropped the excess calories.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

5895.764

He might have lived an additional two or three years, but he was really happy until the end.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6063.211

I love it. And I love this example of the creatine experiment, because just to repeat the conclusion, because I want to make sure that people don't take away the wrong conclusion. Creatine works. Absolutely. But your belief about creatine works more in this case. So two things can work, one more than the other. And the placebo AKA belief effects are very, very powerful.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6092.775

I completely agree with you there. Wonderful way to set the stage for some of the specific questions that were asked when I said on social media, I'm going to sit down with Lane Norton again. And I'm very curious about some of these as well. So I'll inject some of my own experience and questions. Training to failure and reps in reserve. We should define these a little bit.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6116.57

And before we get into it, it's fun to have these kinds of conversations nowadays about resistance training, knowing that both men and women should resistance train people who want bigger muscles and who don't should resistance train. Because in the past, it was always about like bodybuilding and preseason football and people going to the military.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6133.795

I think thanks to the great work that you've done, but I'll just give a particular shout out to some of the women in the nutrition and fitness space, namely Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, in terms of menopause, perimenopause, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and women in that sector really emphasizing the key need for resistance training, their other names as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6155.689

really championing the importance of resistance training. Training to failure in my book means when you can't move the weight, by whatever means, anymore in good form, in proper form. that's failure. So we're not talking about forced reps.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6171.728

We're not talking about, um, swaying the upper body or using momentum when, so trained to failure, you can't move the resistance anymore in good form and reps in reserve. My understanding is one's own subjective understanding about how close they are to that point of failure. Do I have that right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6211.079

Okay. So with those definitions in mind, is training to failure more effective at generating strength and hypertrophy increases than if one keeps a few reps in reserve? And of course, we have to balance this against all the factors related to recovery, et cetera. But Assuming that one follows a program of doing, and I'm really just trying to cut us right through the middle here.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6235.131

Let's say two or three exercises per muscle group and does after a sufficient warmup, let's say two to five sets that we're going to call work sets. You could imagine an extreme scenario where every single work set is taken to failure. You could imagine, taking only the last set of each exercise to failure. You can imagine taking none of them to failure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6263.953

Assuming adequate volume is achieved across the week. My understanding is this is 10 to 20 sets per muscle group across the week. It could be distributed across different workouts or all done in one workout. Is training to failure going to generate more strength and hypertrophy than leaving some repetitions and reserves? So let's start with the extreme scenario.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6286.037

I go to failure on every single set and I do what I need to to recover. It doesn't matter if it's only doing that muscle group once per week or spread out multiple times per week. I'm doing what I need to to recover in between. My genetics, my hormone status, my sleep, my nutrition, on and on. Is going to failure more effective than not going to failure?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6374.032

And did they control for total volume of work? Because I can imagine not going to failure, you can do more sets because you've got more, quote unquote, gas in the tank, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6438.149

So this is gun to the head type failure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6515.019

I think you make a very important point, which is that occasionally training to failure gives you a sense of what failure really is for you. And no one can really tell you that. Only you can tell you that and experience that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6529.329

But if I understand correctly, earlier you said once you know what failure is for you, then if strength gains are your goal, and I think more and more people, by the way, are training for strength who don't want hypertrophy, at least not across every muscle group. I think when I talk to the general public, which I do a lot, I get the sense that men and women are like, yeah, I'll lift weights.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6551.023

I can see the value of that. Would love a little bit more muscle here, a little bit more muscle there, but they don't want to be generally larger. Yet they can understand and appreciate the value of getting stronger everywhere. Because being strong across your whole body is one of the core definitions of health.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

6947.993

No, but I think a lot of the audience would like to be stronger and not necessarily grow their muscles bigger, except in a few specific places on the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7000.254

Interesting. That's the concentric phase, the lowering phase, the eccentric phase. Yeah, we're not sure about that yet.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7098.237

Yeah. It's all controlled.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7104.287

And the research shows anywhere from. Five to 30 repetitions can generate hypertrophy as long as the final few repetitions are really hard and volume is adjusted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7133.313

Also, if you work out in a... That's a little boring for me. Yes. And if you work out in a gym where there are other people, be kind. Other people are going to need the space and the equipment. So it could take forever. 10 sets of 30, that's impolite. So we're only half kidding there. One of the more common questions... is about training for people 50 years old and older.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7161.494

And I love the fact that we're talking so much about strength. This seems to be one of the key evolutions in this field. Again, in my opinion, the people who've come through this podcast as guests, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7175.34

yourself, Andy Galpin, who now has his own podcast, the Perform podcast, like more and more discussions about strength and training for strength for the general public, not just people who want to be power lifters. So I think there's a lot of carry over there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7187.688

And I think the more that people hear us say that resistance training can be really powerful for health and longevity and getting strong is one of the best things you can do for your health and longevity, injury protection, et cetera. Peter Atiyah has talked about this and it's not just about building muscle. want to know how they should adjust their training, if at all, if they are 50 and older.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7212.797

So obviously one of the key things to getting and staying in great shape over time, I always say is avoid getting hurt. Could we say, okay, don't try anything too novel and crazy without easing into it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7228.389

Okay. Could we also say perhaps find the movements that you can do without injury and just keep doing those over and over? Is there any evidence that mixing up the exercises is important, meaning doing new movements? Or if you find two or three movements that work well for you, can you just stick with those and just work on progressive overload?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7389.388

Right. And it feeds back to that consistency principle that you talked about before.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

7836.879

We used to just think that there was brown, beige, and white fat cells, and subcutaneous, and intravisceral. Now they've done sequencing of different white fat cells, and like 25, probably now 50, different genetics among those cells that respond differently to insulin. I mean, fat is a very interesting and heterogeneous tissue. It's really interesting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8103.209

Yeah. Using, thinking about muscle as an organ, thinking about feeding muscle. We talked about that earlier. Thinking about moving muscle and in particular training for strength, resistance training of different kinds. Hypertrophy, yes. But I, you know, I'm kind of given a little bit of a, biased vote for more strength training out there across the population for really for the longevity reasons.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8123.829

I mean, Peter Atiyah has pointed out that the percentage of people who die after a fall, not because of the fall itself, but because of a hip injury or a wrist injury, and then they go immobile. Or they're just not exercising as much anymore. Then they get an infection and then it cascades. In fact, I had a conversation with one of my parents recently on their 79th birthday.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8145.72

I said, you know, in the next five, 10 years, your biggest risk is probably going to be going downstairs or stepping off a curb, not going up. But as Peter's pointed out, going down so that that eccentric movement break, you know, being able to sustain a fall, being able to not fall to catch yourself, so to speak.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8168.595

Exactly. And this and that pattern of falling while going down precedes a lot of infections and that end up deadly. Right. So, you know. Hats off to Peter for really pointing out the relationship between those things and to you for encouraging people to strength train.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8183.615

Also, I love the idea that I don't have to go to failure if I'm in strength training, because I like training heavy, but the training to the point where the muscles are quaking, even though that's how I initially started training, because I came up in the Mike Menser camp, I actually find that it eats into my recovery in a way that maybe is a little more subtle, but meaningful.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8204.212

And nonetheless, which is that I feel fatigued later in the day. Whereas if I complete a training session where I can complete every rep, I notice I don't get into that quaking thing. I actually have a lot of mental and physical energy later in the day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8219.318

Maybe this one could be out of a brief answer or maybe not, I don't know. Are there true age-related changes in metabolism that are independent of decline in muscle mass? You know, I saw a paper, I think it was published in Science a few years ago that said that metabolism actually doesn't slow that much as we age. Of course, total muscle mass.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8239.363

BMR, basal metabolic rate. In general, well, I should just say up until that paper came out, I thought, okay, as we get older, our quote-unquote metabolism slows. Then, of course, we have to remember that puberty and childhood is sort of like being on performance-enhancing drugs in the sense that protein synthesis is just massive and ongoing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8258.858

But let's just say from age 30 onward, let's say between 30 and 80, assuming that somebody is doing things to maintain muscle mass, Is there any reason to believe that their basal metabolic rate actually goes down just as a function of age?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

83.115

Indeed, we cover many topics in this episode. you can be sure that all of the information you hear from Dr. Norton is being filtered through that extremely stringent filter that Dr. Norton is so well-known for.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8348.894

You just have a lot of it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

848.47

Yeah, that's true.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8539.501

But my guess is that it would also drive more activity, feeling better, more activity, sleeping better, more activity.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8606.021

All right. So speaking of Ozempic, Munjaro and similar drugs. Let's talk about these drugs that are reducing appetite and in fairness have allowed millions of people to lose substantial amounts of weight and keep it off. This topic tends to get people a little bit riled up on social media because I think for some reason people believe that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8630.788

If one gives these drugs the nod, you're essentially saying you don't need to exercise. But I didn't see anywhere or hear anywhere that the use of any compound, drug or otherwise, is mutually exclusive with taking good care of oneself in other ways too. So what are your thoughts on these compounds and what you're seeing out there?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8790.799

It's about a pound per week of increase in body weight.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

883.279

Do you want to just explain for the general listener what a meta-analysis is? Just in kind of top contour.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

8875.745

Taking one jar or so.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9238.24

Like as if it's going to take their jobs away. It's like the same way that people fear AI. Like it's somehow – like this stuff is here to stay. It benefits many, many people. I feel this way about these GLP-1 mimetics and I feel the same way about AI. It's like these things could be, yes, potentially used for evil but also for good.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

926.492

Right. One study with 10 subjects would have a very small doc compared to a subject with 500 subjects.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9496.325

Yeah, I think also when people hear about these drugs, they think about the person who's slightly overweight or who is already fit, who wants to be even thinner. And that's not what we're talking about here. And I have a good friend who is an air traffic controller. He works very, very hard. very stressful job, obviously, high consequence job. And he's very overweight.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

95.507

And thus, by the end of today's episode, you will be armed not only with the latest information on nutrition, training, and supplementation, but you'll also be armed with your own filter to determine what sorts of health protocols are actionable for you. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9520.191

He's gotta be more than 300 pounds by a significant margin. And he's really struggled over the years. And for years, he talked about getting his, you know, quote unquote, stomach stapled, you know, sometimes referred to that way. Couldn't afford the surgery, this sort of thing. And I asked him about it. I was like, you know, what's that about?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9536.31

He's like, I just need something that's going to allow me to move without pain or a little bit less pain. Every time he tries exercising, he injures himself. And he's probably going about that incorrectly because he doesn't have a lot of time. And he literally has lives in his hands. He's married now. You know, he may have kids soon. So I haven't spoken to him recently about these drugs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9556.723

But to me, it seems like that's like the perfect candidate for these drugs. If he could eat less. with more ease and lose some weight and then also start exercising, I think that'd be a significant win for him. So scenarios like that are what I think of. And then also, you know, it's a mostly free world in many places, not all.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9577.092

So if people can afford these things and they want to take them, like who am I to say they shouldn't take them? You know, I just like, I feel like the amount of judgment involved to say that somebody should or should not use a drug is that's, safe and potentially helpful for them is like kind of, I mean, that's, that's almost offensive in, in a way.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9626.967

I love that. On the other side of the coin, you've been pretty vocal elsewhere about the fact that sugar is not a drug. You know, because sometimes people will say, you know, sugar is a drug. I would sort of put in the soft argument for my side, soft argument that highly processed foods, or let's just call them high density of taste foods, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9653.143

That combine, you know, processed carbohydrates and fats that, you know, at high heats that can be consumed in, you know, where you can easily consume several thousand calories that, you know, almost unconsciously, right? I mean, unless you're asleep or in a coma, you can just pop these things in your mouth and keep going. I don't even know if they taste that good, but people just keep going.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9671.788

That there's a bit of kind of lack of awareness and compulsivity to them. Very different than addiction, of course, because people aren't necessarily going out and robbing Robbing people. But maybe just touch on your view of sugar as a substance. We're not talking about the sugar in fruit. We're talking about candy, ice creams, desserts, quote-unquote hidden sugars.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

9694.535

What are the real risks of these things if people are consuming them still within the confines of their daily caloric needs? So they're not eating excess calories. What's the deal with sugar?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

997.032

Right. Self-report. People sneak. People forget.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Alan Shore.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1069.737

Baby cries, mother nurses baby.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

108.446

And the transitioning back and forth between those states, as Dr. Shor explains, is critical to our emotional development and how we form attachments later.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

117.173

So if you've heard, for instance, of avoidant attachment or anxious attachment or secure attachment, today you'll understand why those particular attachment styles develop, how they translate from early life to your adolescence, teen years, and adulthood, and in fact, how those childhood attachment patterns, which of course we can't control for ourselves, but we can control for our children,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

137.817

how we can modify them through very specific protocols in order to achieve better relations with both others and with ourselves. It's indeed a very special conversation. And to my knowledge, unlike any other discussions about relationships, neuroscience, or psychology that certainly I have heard before, and I fully expect that for you, it will be as well.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1393.069

So just so I'm clear, in avoidant attachment, the baby, which is now, let's say, two and a half years old, three years old.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1405.419

That's a toddler, excuse me. The toddler is auto-regulating more often than seeking another to help do coordinated regulation.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1553.547

I think this is a really important thing to hover on for a moment, just given some context about hundreds of thousands of questions that I get about avoidant versus secure versus anxious attached. And you stated it all incredibly clearly. But I want to make sure that we double click on this, as they say, the idea that.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

157.148

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1575.129

if a child and mother did not coordinate their autonomic- Use the word synchronize. Synchronize. Do not synchronize their autonomic regulation in the proper way that there would be a non-secure attachment. I'm using that language for a specific reason. Makes total sense. But this idea that if the child, which soon the baby, which is a toddler at three or so,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1601.897

is avoidant, then they're going to have to learn to auto-regulate and they're going to seek others to help them regulate less than a secure attached. And the anxious attached, baby, toddler, adolescent, adult, will do just the opposite.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1618.682

They're going to have a hard time self-soothing, but they are going to feel, let's say these might be the kind of people that don't well tolerate a text message not getting responded to at a very short latency, for instance. And we all, depending on context, we have this, right? But I find this to be incredibly important, which is why I wanted to go back through it, because I think nowadays,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1644.392

We hear so much about anxious and securely attached, avoidant, et cetera, in the context of adult romantic relationships. But I hope that people are realizing the truly incredible importance of your work, which is that the same circuitry and mechanisms that are used to establish infant mother attachment are repurposed later in life for adult relationships.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1668.692

I think that when we hear that, it makes sense, but I don't think that most people know that. They assume somehow that there's circuitry in our brain and body for adult romantic attachment that is distinct from our attachment circuitry that we had with our parent. And I think your work speaks very loudly that they are in fact the exact same circuitry.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

17.83

Dr. Alan Shore is a clinician psychoanalyst, and he is the world expert in how childhood attachment patterns impact our adult relationships, including romantic relationships, friendships, and professional relationships, as well as our relationship to ourselves.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

1719.89

The D babies.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

176.875

David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right. Twenty eight grams of protein and 75 percent of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one and I also like the cake flavored one.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

198.313

Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2057.287

Think, let it be, so to speak. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2073.683

The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice a day is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement. What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2092.113

AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2106.879

So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, I rarely get sick, and my mood and mental focus are at their best. In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

212.903

With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2127.292

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Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2151.688

Tell me more about surrender. And I just want to make sure I understand this is surrender on the part of the therapist trying to, yes, listen to the narrative that the patient is sharing, but also paying attention to the underlying emotional state. Is the person quaking? Are they angry? Is there feelings of anxiety? despair, shock, disgust. So they're carrying this in their parallel tracks.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2183.367

And then is the goal of the therapist, if they're an effective one, to then soothe the patient? Or is it to allow the patient to have some sort of catharsis, some release of this? At what point does the therapist intervene and try and coordinate and show the patient a different way to think about and feel about the topic matter?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

232.056

I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2329.941

So the therapist can literally and somatically show the patient what auto-regulation is like or what coordinated regulation is like.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2386.67

So often nowadays, I think we hear that adult romantic relationships can provide a healing of some of the failures of childhood attachment. And there's also a phrase thrown around a lot that we need to learn to parent ourselves.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2409.433

This is more of a pop psychology, online, social media thing, you know, that people need to learn to mother and father themselves at some level, to self-soothe and to, you know, who knows what that means. I'm not going to try and define it. It's not operationally defined.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2423.498

So the question I have is to what extent do you think the process that you just described with a therapist can start to rewire some of the – the capacity to auto-regulate or coordinated to regulate.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

251.93

Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

267.801

And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2707.295

It's fascinating. There are a couple of questions I have before we move forward about mother-infant attachment as opposed to father-infant attachment. So that's one. And I'll ask these again in a moment, but I think you'll see where I'm going here. And then I'm fascinated by the idea that these circuits get established early in life, then are repurposed for adult relationships.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2731.437

They can be modified in the way that you just described. but that they cross gender and gender lines. So for instance, a female baby can form these patterns of attachment. with their mother, female caretaker, but then assuming that baby grows up to be a heterosexual woman and she has attachments to men, then these things can be reactivated across gender lines, right?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2763.513

So this formation of the circuitry is not gender specific, although it sounds like it's important that be the mother to child in some way. You keep saying mother-child as opposed to caretaker.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2775.056

So to just spell them out one by one, first question, are there any data about the formation of these circuits in the baby where the mother is either not available, if it's an adopted mother, if it's a child raised by extended family? I mean, there's so many different configurations, but you get the point.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

280.588

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Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2817.088

Between age zero and two.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2829.192

Could be dad, could be mom. Could be.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2847.767

For a second there, I wasn't sure if you were joking. But I don't know, maybe that's reflective of a natural right brain.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2895.9

So more activation of the sympathetic autonomic. Yeah. So sort of more up, let's call it up-level play. Yes.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

296.655

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

2989.219

What about under situations where there's really just one primary caretaker? This is increasingly common nowadays. And in some countries, like in certain Scandinavian countries, people opt to do this and elsewhere, of course, but this isn't always a divorce situation. Sometimes people decide to have children on their own.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3051.178

What are your thoughts about some of the modern exploration of compounds that can facilitate more right brain synchrony between therapist and patient? I've done a few episodes about MDMA. assisted psychotherapy. These, of course, were just recently not approved by the FDA, so these are not legal. Nonetheless, there are interesting clinical studies showing that these are in pathogens.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3079.719

One could imagine that they could be useful in the proper context to improve patient-therapist right brain synchrony and accelerate some of this process. But It seems like it would also require both the patient and the therapist taking the compound. And that seems like it would have all sorts of ethical issues.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

316.509

It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3269.439

Can adrenaline pass across the placenta? I should know this. I know adrenaline doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, but the brain makes its own adrenaline. But do we know if adrenaline crosses the placental barrier?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3358.527

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3367.49

While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

337.185

Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Alan Shore. Dr. Alan Shore, welcome. Nice to be here. To kick things off, I have a simple question, which is what percentage of our thinking and our behavior

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3385.436

Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

34.221

Dr. Schor is on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is also the author of several important books, including Right Brain Psychotherapy and Development of the Unconscious Mind.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3405.751

Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3427.938

Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3435.624

I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3453.737

Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3466.045

As I recall in your book, Right Brain Psychotherapy, there was a description, beautiful description of, you know, these up states and then these more calming state coordination between mother and child. And I started to, I actually read this book When I was living in Topanga, I would walk on the road. I don't recommend this. There are no sidewalks in Topanga. And I would read the physical copy.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3488.468

And I recall very distinctly thinking about this image of the baby and the mother. And the baby is a little bit hyper aroused, is upset. And so the mother would make sort of sounds, not necessarily words like shh. These kinds of things or humming or, you know, or bouncing lullabies, these sorts of things. That's the prosody. That's the prosody.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3512.458

And then the related release of things like serotonin, perhaps oxytocin as well. We can talk more about those. But then also how critical it is for... the mother to be able to regulate the baby's transition to upstates.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3526.168

Like looking at the baby as it comes out of a nap and saying, you know, good morning and really wide eyes, lots of gesturing, lots of gesticulating that is, you know, bringing the voice level up and the baby, you know, really waking up in a kind of a steeper slope of arousal and how important that was. And then that being slightly more related, and this makes perfect sense to norepinephrine,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3550.546

adrenaline at low healthy levels and perhaps dopamine as well. Is that the right way to think about this? And if so, is that what's going on when we form adult friendships, adult relationships? Are we oscillating back and forth between the ability to hang out and relax and soothe each other and the ability to kind of get excited about something? Is this the basis of all relationships and relating?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

359.551

you think is governed by our conscious mind versus our unconscious mind.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3764.984

You can have anxiously attached narcissistic?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3773.875

You said a vulnerable attachment?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3779.591

These people constantly need praise?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3812.337

Yeah, because I believe that's a primary feature of borderline personality disorder. Yes. Which I think we should also touch on.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3821.758

Yeah. So my understanding about splitting is that it's the I love you, I hate you phenomenon brought on by not just an internal switch, which is sometimes seen in like bipolar disorder, but rather somebody with a borderline personality disorder will see something and be very upset.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3845.441

Like suddenly the fact that a glass is empty of a drink meant that they didn't think enough to refill a glass or something. Whereas a few minutes before it was perfectly fine. It was not an issue, right? There needs to be a trigger and then they split. Is that right?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3875.73

Does it sometimes go the other way? That person's all good, I'm bad?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3934.436

Are these people with borderline personality, I don't know if you still call it a disorder nowadays that gets a little bit into the... Let's call it borderline with borderline. Do they exhibit the same sort of splitting idealization and then the idea that somebody is terrible and they want nothing to do with them in the context of work relationships, friendships?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

3956.325

Does it extend out into other domains of life or is it unique to certain types of relationships?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4009.639

The caregiver doesn't want anything to do with that.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4163.912

I'm pausing because I'm just taking all this in and thinking about what are the ways that people can start to tap into this right brain health or lack of health and ways to repair their right brain circuitry, so to speak. without a therapist, or is that just simply impossible?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4254.176

I think I just got it. I think, if I'm not mistaken, what you're describing is interactive dynamics that create or elaborate on circuitry that exists in all of us, but that for some people might be atrophied because of the lack of proper emotional nourishment early in life, but that we can engage these right brain circuits. But then when we're not around these people,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4284.384

There must be something about the right brain circuitry that provides a sort of a soothing function so that we must know at an implicit level that like we can do this. Like we know how to attach in healthy ways to people. We have a close friend we can rely on. We have maybe friends, plural. We maybe repaired a relationship with a sibling, this kind of thing.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4305.595

So it's not that these circuits need to constantly be engaged every moment with the barista, but that we somehow at an unconscious level, it must be that we come to realize that this circuitry has re-elaborated or is elaborated in a way that we know, quote unquote, we can do it.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4526.431

And they can't read the face of voice, and they can't synchronize well. Can I stop you and ask one question, which is, let's say that, let's take this conversation for instance. I'm listening to your words very carefully. If I make an effort to listen especially carefully to what somebody is saying, the content of their words,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4547.17

Is there a competition between left and right brain such that I'm now not getting as much right brain listening Yeah, okay. This to me feels like the surrender aspect. Whereas I can... And I do this during these interviews slash discussions where I'll sit back sometimes and I'm still listening, but I widen my gaze.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

456.25

Let's start thinking about and talking about this right brain versus left brain thing. And what I'd like to know is when we come into this world, How much lateralization, as we call it, how much right versus left brain specialization is there at the time when we exit the womb, when we take our first breath?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4569.71

I don't look around, but I widen my gaze and I'm trying to just feel something coming in. I'm not a therapist, obviously. No one would ever suspect that I was. But... I only do it for a few seconds and then I reengage. And I used to think that it was like a relaxation of sorts, but inevitably I feel like it's a different way to, the conversation takes a different direction.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4595.569

Is that more or less what you're talking about?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4608.719

So if I'm listening very carefully to exactly what you said, and I'm tracking everything you said, like we're in a courtroom situation, then my right brain is suppressed.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4619.707

Is that right?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4622.569

Okay. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4668.045

I haven't heard that, but that's beautiful.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4713.615

A hyperlinear person.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4889.335

I always remind people these are two little bits of brain outside your cranial vault. As weird as that might seem, they are two bits of brain. Your retina is central nervous system. And you're looking at – that's about as close as you can get to looking at somebody's brain state as anything.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

4940.266

So this is prosody. This is what the Italians do so well.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

50.191

Today's discussion with Dr. Schor is an extremely important one for everyone to hear, to understand themselves and to understand the people in their lives. Why? We all go through the first 24 months of age. You wouldn't be listening to this if you hadn't.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5131.128

Fascinating and makes total sense based on the newer imaging tools, revealing synchrony, et cetera. I have two questions that can be asked in parallel, music and dogs. Why music and dogs? Well, some of what you're describing reminds me of the state shift that occurs when I hear particular pieces of music for which I'm not paying attention to the lyrics or in some cases the lyrics matter.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5165.866

I'm listening, but they don't make any sense. Like if they were read out as a paragraph, it wouldn't make any sense. but it feels like there's some fundamental truth there. So this is, I could state specific musical preferences, but it's highly individual.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5179.536

So for some people it's classical music, for other people it's music that contains lyrics, but there's this feeling like, yes, like there's a truth there and I feel that truth, even though the content of the words, let's take, couldn't help myself, like a Bob Dylan song, for instance, he's certainly could be considered a poet, right?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5198.391

And if you read the lyrics just as a paragraph, you'd be like, this is nonsense. But the way that it's sung, the meaning behind it, the timbre in the voice, the prosody, et cetera, and presumably the emotion that he was feeling at the time when the music was recorded communicates with us and we enter a synchronous state.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5215.164

And then in parallel to this, I mentioned dogs where, sure, they have a left brain and a right brain. But I think with animals generally, if they're domestic animals and we have a very close relationship to them, we can really feel a resonance with them and presumably them with us. And for anyone that's experienced it, some people might be chuckling now, but it's nothing short of profound, right?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5239.717

The extent to which we really feel like they see us and we see them and there's a bond. Clearly not the same magnitude as a parent-child bond, but nonetheless. So music and dogs, do you think it's tapping in to this same right temporal parietal

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5267.506

Okay, so we're basically going from anterior to posterior, just there's structures the whole way back.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5283.672

Where is the surrender switch?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5289.999

So not so much paying attention to the content of the words, the logic behind them, the logical flaws that might exist, the analytic part, but rather how the words sound, how the words feel, literally.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5338.781

Dogs everywhere smiling.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5421.047

Or playing music with others. This is something I'm incapable of because I have no musical ability. But playing music with others, you can see that when we talk about the chemistry of a band, it's so incredible to witness that and then to feel it in mass with thousands maybe of other people.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5457.827

You mentioned earlier Stephen Porges' work. And we know that brain and body are connected in both directions. And I should know this, but I don't know if the right brain has preferential communication with the parasympathetic or sympathetic or other aspects of Well, vagus is parasympathetic, but I think it's probably both.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5481.027

I think the more we discover about the vagus, it's likely to be mixed, sympathetic, parasympathetic, but I'll catch some heat for that, but that's okay. But bodily sensing is a real thing. There are ways that our diaphragm and our core relax when we're happy. I mean, all of this is obvious to anyone, but I'm just curious how right brain links up with bodily state.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5508.729

um incidentally i'm gonna do you know the name ian mcgilchrist yes i know the name and many people have commented on our youtube channel that i need to talk to ian um um that's all that i have gotten that far but i've been busy um get him get him uh great ian we'll send you an invite yeah i mean uh

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5555.448

Yeah, so I'm curious as to how people can start to sense these right brain, left brain shifts. We talked about how paying a little less attention to the content of words and a little bit more to how a conversation is feeling

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5574.332

independent of the word content might be part of it um we hear a lot these days about you know how body posture matters you know that you know like if people are closed up with their arms crossed i don't know but sometimes i'm just a little chilly so i'll cross my arms and sometimes i'll cross my arms and lean in and i know that i'm in a much more attuned state so i don't put too much weight on that but maybe i should put more weight on that and what are your thoughts yeah

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5625.108

I love this. Forgive me for interrupting, but I love this because people, especially on social media, they take a piece of information like, you know, if you're leaned back, you're disengaged. You're leaned forward, you're engaged. But you could also just turn it right around and say, if you're leaned forward, you're impending, and then the person doesn't have space.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5641.3

And so it becomes, frankly, it becomes a bunch of BS. Right.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

580.115

Does that mean that everything about attachment is occurring in the first 24 months?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5806.45

I appreciate you saying that. I feel the same way. Text messaging has become a dominant mode of communication these days. I've hosted a few guest expert in emotions in the brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett, for instance, and others. And she and others have talked about how the emojification of emotions, you know, just like a smiley face or a crying face or, oh, goodness, or, you know, mind blown.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5834.425

These things are convenient, as is shorthand text, lack of punctuation, et cetera. But Today's conversation also highlights the extent to which text messaging is pretty much devoid of most everything that you're talking about. A green bubble or a blue bubble, seen or not seen, read or not read, depending on how you set your settings.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5858.374

The latency, the turn-taking, sometimes people layer in multiple conversations and you're going back and forth about a couple of different things and then your food order comes. sure, the human brain can handle this, but this seems either not good, neutral, that is, or bad for building and reinforcing communication.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5883.457

It actually concerns me, but of course I'm now 49, so I can say things like now that I'm 49, I can say things like that, you know, but it concerns me because I think that you can imagine the young brain and older brain essentially not being good at interpersonal dynamics because of text messaging.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5946.195

So I have a rule. I don't argue over text. I don't like to argue over text. I don't like to argue, period. But I don't, you know, I'll pick up the phone. I'm of the generation where we called one another. I find text to be completely devoid of what I'm really seeking in terms of connection.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5968.427

And I think that there's an entire, I know there's an entire generation of people that grew up communicating mainly through short message.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5978.709

Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, has been encouraging young kids to put away their phones and get out and interact more, encouraging parents to let their kids be more what they call free-range kids and do this kind of thing, arguing that there's far fewer dangers in the physical world than there are in the online world for young brains. He makes a convincing argument.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

5998.919

For those of us that are seeking to have better connections, Maybe even do some healing of the right brain circuitry that you're talking about today. Do you think that there's a hierarchy of effectiveness such that, you know, like text would be perhaps at the bottom? voice memo, maybe next level up, I'm thinking here, a phone call.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6024.194

There was a time when we wrote handwritten letters and those felt very meaningful. I kept handwritten letters from people that I cared about and that cared about me. The handwritten letters proves that it doesn't have to be a real-time exchange, but there's something about handwriting. A typewritten letter, by today's standards, would also be a significant thing. But

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6046.971

You know, there really seems to be something special about a letter, a face-to-face conversation.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6097.538

These are people that walk around with left brains that are hypertrophied?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6153.216

Yeah, please share.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6244.022

That's a spectacular list, making the right brain circuitry at least among the most exciting circuits, certainly important circuits.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6259.451

I love right brain psychotherapy. Love, love, love it. I own a hardcover copy. I've owned it for a couple years now. I highly recommend it. We'll put links to your books in the show notes.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6272.779

Okay, will do. What are some activities that allow us to, quote unquote, drop into our right brain circuitry a bit more? One that immediately leapt to mind, as you mentioned nature and interacting with nature, and we were talking about music, is walking. And earlier we talked about, you educated us on, rather, this notion of wide range attention, this energy.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6305.012

evenly suspended attention that is associated with the right brain, this kind of widening of gaze as opposed to narrow gaze and narrow attention that is associated with left brain circuitry. When we're out in nature and when we're ambulating, when we're walking, provided we're not looking at our phone, one hopes, or looking for something specific like a bird that we've spotted,

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6329.142

We tend to be in panoramic vision. I'm a vision scientist, so I can't help myself. You know, what we call magnocellular vision. These are like big pixels. I'm aware. Yeah, taking it all in. And it's more spherical than kind of a cone of attention. I would imagine that might be more right brain associated. What are some things that you, if you...

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6355.655

suggest to your patients like, hey, you know, until our next session, you know, do you encourage them to journal, free associate journal, to listen to music, to take walks? Or do you restrict the activation of this right brain circuitry to the session and then let it just show up as it were?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6375.823

Yeah. So you let them sort of just default to what's happening?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

64.859

And during that first 24 months of age, your brain develops in a particular way depending on how you interacted with your primary caretaker, namely your mother, but also your father or other primary caretakers. In that first 24 months, your right brain and your left brain mediate very specific but different processes. For instance, today you'll learn from Dr. Shore that your right brain circuitry

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6794.225

I have a friend, he's a songwriter, and he told me that He has this process whereby he writes music every day, but he starts his day by painting or drawing. I think he's sold some paintings and drawings, but that's not his main vocation. But he told me that he draws and paints as a way to sort of grease the gears to songwriting.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6821.514

And then I learned that Joni Mitchell did this too or something similar. And I can't help but wonder whether or not they've unconsciously tapped into a mode of bringing right brain circuitry up in terms of its activity. Neither of them are known as painters or artists, but of course musical artists and quite accomplished ones at that. Does that sort of tool or technique make sense?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6893.893

I do.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6961.911

Amazing. I love this. And I'll refrain from sharing my personal use of such a sort of, I guess we call them avenues into the right. But I want to make clear, I understand you're in the stacks of books in the library. It feels and sounds like a cognitive endeavor, a left brain endeavor.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

6985.489

but then it just came to you, I want to play the piano, or through the research that you were doing, this 10-year self-research, amazing, by the way, I'm like so struck by that, then did it just come to you in a flash? Like, I want to play the piano again. And was it because playing the piano contrasted so much with looking through the stacks or they were aligned?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7059.79

Tell me more.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7115.331

So important. I often get asked, you know, what's your note taking process? How do you prepare a solo episode? I do these long solos that, you know, I have only a few pages of notes, but I could describe it. But the process is so specific to the way that I learn.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7128.021

across the whatever six, eight, 10 weeks that it takes me to prepare for one of those, sometimes more, that it wouldn't really translate. Like it doesn't matter.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7171.061

given the extreme importance of this right brain circuitry and of this autonomic synchrony between mother and typically mother, primary caretaker that is, and infant, what are some things that are known from the literature as critically important about that stage in terms of amount of time spent with the child

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7197.786

You know, oftentimes parents are working, there are nannies or any number of different things. There are a lot of different structures nowadays for families and balancing work and family. But is there anything known about how to, I hate to use the word optimize, but maximize the health of the relationship?

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7381.949

It is a shame. What's wonderful, however, is that you're highlighting these issues. So many people are hearing about this. And I encourage anyone, everyone listening to really take in the ordering of importance of what Dr. Shore just shared, that IQ third on the list, emotion regulation, number one.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7406.895

Conduct. Yeah. So the idea that we need to train our kids up as little memorizing computers is clearly the wrong idea. Clearly, there's important information that needs to be committed to memory to be a functional human being, but that we're missing not just critical knowledge transfer, but critical emotional transfer.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7431.158

And for that reason, and for so many other reasons, I really want to thank you for coming in today and having this conversation. It's unlike any conversation I've had on this podcast for several reasons, not the least of which is that you have this incredible

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7447.734

knowledge of the neurobiology, which for me is a delight, and I'm sure for the listeners too, but also the clinical experience, which is so rich. And it's clear you've also done your own work in exploring these ideas. And you've been here for and participated in the evolution of this whole right brain, left brain thing, the advent of neuroimaging and how that's really shed new light.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7470.069

I just love, love, love the way that you braid all this together in terms of actionable things with patient and therapist, but also just in terms of one's understanding of self. I'm certain people are going to take this knowledge into their lives and into the world, and it's been really enriching for me, and I'm certain it's going to be immensely enriching for them.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7490.146

So thank you for the work you do. Thank you for taking the time to come here today. And I'm excited about your new book. So keep us informed as to when that comes out. Maybe we'll have you back on for another discussion if you're willing. And just thank you so much for entering this left brain, right brain dance and dynamic. It's been thoroughly enjoyable for me.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

7516.397

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Alan Shore. To learn more about his work and to find links to his books, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

Huberman Lab

How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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Another terrific zero cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-based tools, some of which overlap with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content covered on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as brief one to three page PDFs that cover protocols for things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure. There's a protocol for for managing your dopamine.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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There's a protocol for optimizing your sleep, for neuroplasticity and learning, and much more. To sign up for the newsletter, simply go to hubermanlab.com. There you provide your email. I'd like to emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. And as I mentioned before, the newsletter is completely zero cost. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Alan Shor.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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Yeah, just to remind listeners, I've talked about this on previous podcasts. I'll provide a link to that segment, but a strange situation can briefly be described as parent and usually mother and child come into the clinic. They deliberately leave the baby with a caretaker. This is sort of a pseudo daycare type situation.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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Mother leaves, and then there's a lot of attention paid to how the infant or young child, toddler, whatever age they were looking at reacts. Are they nervous? Are they able to engage in play? And then they look at the return of the mother and how they react to that. And there was this classification of behaviors along the lines of secure attached, insecure attached.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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There was a categorization of kind of an amalgam of different things, these so-called D babies that were kind of a bunch of other things. And this is where we hear a lot nowadays about secure, insecure, and anxious and avoidant adult relationship styles. There's been a lot written about that and talked about that.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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We don't have time to go into all that in detail, but this is what Dr. Shore is referring to. I'm really intrigued by this idea that there's a right brain, left brain dominance that takes place throughout the lifespan.

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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Has it been carefully mapped into adulthood such that we can say as a function of chronological age, you know, when somebody hits their early 30s, that they're more right brain or left brain dominant? Or is it more developmental milestones as opposed to chronological age?

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How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

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That is, specific circuitries on the right-hand side of your brain are involved in developing a very specific type of resonance with your primary caretaker that transitions from states of calm and quiescence that you both share simultaneously to states that are considered up states of excitement, of enthusiasm, of being wide-eyed.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. John Cruz. Dr. John Cruz is an MD, PhD, and practicing psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of ADHD in both kids and in adults.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Does that carry over to other domains of life? Do you see, for instance, that people with ADHD have a harder time with parenting? Not that kids aren't super interesting, but some of their activities might be less interesting to parents than others versus people who are just – I think of this word importance-driven as just kind of like really dutiful.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Like you do it because you're supposed to do it.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with a ton of new knowledge and you'll have a lot of practical tools you can apply. And now for my discussion with Dr. John Kruse. Dr. John Kruse, welcome. I'm glad to be here today. Let's talk about ADHD, and probably best if we start off by just kind of laying out what it is. Is the H, is the hyperactivity component always in there?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I can relate. I mean, I spent 20 plus years training to become a bench scientist and run a lab. And then now I still teach and hold my appointment, still involved in a bit of research, but I'm in a, second career now-ish. And I imagine there'll be a third. We can talk later if you think I have ADHD or not.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I certainly consume a lot of caffeine and we'll come back to the idea, the relationship between levels of caffeine consumption and possible ADHD. We're seeding the discussion for later on that. We hear pretty often that social media and scrolling or scrolling Instagram or TikTok is quote-unquote giving people ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Are there any data, either clinical or otherwise, that suggests that the mere practice of looking at 10,000 different contexts or even 15 videos for a minute while standing at the bus stop is somehow creating – more a distractibility in other domains of life.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Childhood ADHD, adult ADHD, maybe if you would just give us the top contour of this, and then we can get into ways to combat ADHD depending on different circumstances, different needs, this sort of thing.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Very interesting. I didn't realize that ADHD carried this lifespan liability. And 10 years is certainly significant.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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My understanding, and you'll see how this weaves into the previous question in a moment, my understanding is that people with ADHD have the ability to focus quite intensely on things that really capture their interest. I don't know if I have ADHD or not. I suspect if I do, it's rather mild or I just feel lucky that I went through the educational system at a time when there were no smartphones.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'm really grateful for that. I actually used to unplug the phone in the laboratory where I was a PhD student so that I could just do experiments from 5 p.m. on because that was the only way people could reach me. And I certainly am familiar with the it's almost a drug like effect of dropping into an activity. Sometimes people call it flow. But for me, it just is dropping into an activity.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Did some early morning writing this morning and gosh, the feeling of pleasure just everywhere from head to toe after doing 20 minutes of focused work or 30 minutes of focused work is so striking to me. And yet I like, I think most people find it difficult sometimes to just get rid of all the distractions unless there's a deadline, which is one of the reasons I love deadlines.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So the question is this, is it true that people with ADHD can in fact focus, but that somehow whatever neural or neurochemical thresholds are there to allow them to drop into focus. They're just much higher thresholds. It just takes more fear of a deadline or fear of a consequence or excitement about the activity. Is that true?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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No one can pronounce his name. Even fewer can spell it, so we're okay.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I sometimes use the absent-minded professor excuse, but only half-jokingly. There's a photograph that I love of the great Oliver Sacks, the neurologist turned writer, man who mistook his wife for his hat, awakenings and so forth. People may be familiar with Oliver's work. And it's a photograph of Oliver at a train station. Lots of bodies moving around him, some blurry. So there's motion there.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And he's standing there with – I think he's got his pipe in his mouth. And he's writing outside the train station. His bag has fallen to the floor. Some items are coming out. And he was a known and self-professed methamphetamine addict for a great portion of his life. medical and writing career. And, you know, sort of alluded to the idea that he had these tendencies.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And I raise this as an example because I see that photo and I see somebody who's in hyper focus in a very busy environment. But he wrote, I've spent a lot of time with his work and his autobiography, etc., and talk to people who knew him.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And it seemed that he was constantly seeking novel environments where there was a lot of stimulation and somehow that allowed him to drop into these tunnels of focus. Whereas when he spent a lot of time alone, there were bouts of focus, but the quiet actually became a distraction. It was as if somebody in here were speculating, um, uh,

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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about diagnoses, but that there's something about external anchors and internal anchors and that finding that sweet spot is really about knowing ourselves and where we work best at particular times. And this is something I'd like to transition into here is talking about the fact that there isn't just one environment that works for somebody.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It seems like it's often the case that it's certain environments for morning, certain environments for afternoon, certain environments having returned from vacation. You can probably see where I'm going with this. What are your thoughts on people trying to, with ADHD or not, trying to identify sort of best conditions for them and how important is circadian time here?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I know you have, and of course I mentioned in the introduction that you have a lot of background in circadian biology, which I think brings in a really additional and unique dynamic to your understanding of ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So having a regular meal schedule.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Are these people with ADHD sometimes also starting a meal, taking a few bites, and then going back to work? And then like the meal never really ends. It just sort of fragments into the rest of the day.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So we've got sleep, eating, exercise or movement and relaxation. Maybe before we start talking about some medications and some other factors that modulate ADHD, if we could maybe step through each of those and you could share with us some of your favorite tools that you give your patients and that you teach online.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Realizing, of course, that each one of those is a vast topic that we have done entire podcasts on, but I'm curious about your favorite go-to tools. We were talking about a few of these before we started. So sleep, regular to bed and wake-up times?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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As you'll see during today's episode, Dr. Kruse is among the world's top experts in understanding the various treatments for ADHD and tools for helping to overcome non-clinical issues with focus and attention. We, of course, discuss the drug treatments for ADHD. So those include Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, Modafinil, Welbutrin, basically all the drugs that are used to treat ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Can I run something by you in that context before we jump back? I don't consistently take stimulants except caffeine, and I limit my caffeine intake to prior to 2 p.m., and I stack it pretty heavy in the early part of the day. But on occasion, I'll take 25 to 50 milligrams of Welbutrin. which, as you know better than I, is slightly dopaminergic, but certainly triggers noradrenergic release.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So epinephrine, norepinephrine, it's a stimulant. On the days when I take that, which again is very rare, and I track my sleep every night, I notice a significant improvement in my sleep and significant increase in my rapid eye movement sleep. It's extremely consistent. So from that, I sort of reverse engineered the major effect being norepinephrine.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Epinephrine, I decided, well, I would do something else that I know raises epinephrine, which is I'll do a cold plunge first thing in the morning of one to three minutes long. And the effect isn't quite as strong, but on those same days when I do that

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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clearly adrenaline-raising activity, I also see, for me, a significant increase in my rapid eye movement sleep and the quality of sleep later that night. So I think there really is something to this epinephrine, obviously going hand-in-hand with stimulants. Epinephrine spike early and throughout the day with better results. rapid eye movement sleep at night. Does that logically hold for you?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It's just a story, but you know.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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That's a remarkable thing because many people, including myself, have very little trouble falling asleep, especially given how I stack caffeine in the early part of the day and then stop in the afternoon. It allows me to fall asleep within seconds. Somewhere for me, typically around 10 p.m., somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m. is my typical bedtime time.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But then I consistently wake up at, you know, three in the morning, usually get up, use the restroom and then go back to sleep most of the time without too much trouble, provided there isn't a lot of stress in my external life and provided the phone is not in the bedroom.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But as we were also talking about before we turned on the microphones, this idea that our bladders get smaller as we age is complete nonsense, right? So that can't be the explanation why people wake up more in the middle of the night as they get older.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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How much cyclic sighing are you doing before sleep and how long before sleep is the cyclic sighing done?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'm delighted to hear that it's worked so well for you. As people know, I'm a huge fan of the physiological sigh, and I take no credit for having discovered it. It was discovered by physiologists in the 1930s.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So you mentioned that there can be a lot of environmental dependence. One thing that I and I know a lot of people wonder about is with the advent of more people working at home, and certainly during lockdowns, kids were at home for school as well.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So we're talking about sleep. You mentioned earlier, um, encouraging people with ADHD or who think they might have ADHD to keep a somewhat regular eating schedule, or at least to make sure that they're eating, um, and to not let their meals get fragmented into starting a meal, then finishing it later.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Like have for some people it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner for some people like myself, it's lunch, snack, dinner, whatever it is, keeping a regular schedule. Um, Exercise, aside from encouraging people to not exercise too late in the day, certainly not caffeine and exercise late in the day.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Are there any data about specific types of exercise being better for ADHD independent of effects on sleep? I realize they're hard to tease apart.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Is there a relationship between ADHD and addiction because of the impulsivity component?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But is it the case that when somebody with ADHD is in their home environment where there are typically, you know, more options of things to do, that the symptoms get worse, as opposed to when they go to, say, a restaurant or to school or to play a sport or to work where

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And that's for substance abuse, not behavioral addictions.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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This is a really important point that I think maybe we just hover on for a second because I think many people... including myself, assumed that, well, if you were, you know, putting these kids on amphetamines, of which, you know, many of the medications for ADHD are, that we're creating kids that are addicted to amphetamines or to a hyperstimulation period.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But you're telling me it's actually protective to put kids with real ADHD on medication for ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I have this model in my head that is perhaps completely wrong, maybe partially wrong. And it goes something like this, that we know that the neural circuits involved in executive control and directing attention and maintaining attention and avoiding distraction, this kind of thing. use dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine, at least to some extent.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And we know that people with ADHD are capable of focus. As you said, it's a failure to direct that focus, maintain, et cetera. So I've heard from you before this discussion that people that tend to drink lots and lots of caffeine or who can drop into an activity but have a lot of distractibility that they might have ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So what I'm imagining here is that the threshold to get dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine released is either much higher or more complicated for people with ADHD. And so what they're seeking is these catecholamines, these three chemicals, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. that if they're given a medication that puts them in that range where they're getting it, then they're good.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Sure, there are multiple things you can do in those environments, but they're more constrained in terms of the different sides of oneself, the different activities that one tends to engage in. Is that common?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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They can stop seeking it, so to speak. And I'm raising this now because we're talking about addiction. Addiction is a you know, pursuit of things essentially.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And I guess what I'm saying is it seems to me that the model of ADHD that we hear about is that, you know, people can't focus, you know, their dopamine circuits are all out of whack and then you put them on this dopaminergic drug and, you know, basically you get them addicted to that tunnel vision or something.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But I have this model in mind now that what we are all seeking is to have portions of our day where we are directing our focus towards a meaningful bill, the things that are generative in our life, work, school, relationships, et cetera, and that whether or not it's pharmacology or exercise or or what have you, that it's just about getting into this plane of consciousness.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And I say that in no woo or abstract terms. Is that right? I mean, are we really talking about here is a failure to access enough of these neuromodulators and these medications, which we're about to talk about, are really about putting us in the realm where those neuromodulators are just more accessible? I'll just say I can go with that. Okay. Well, you're the expert.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I mean, I'm putting this together based on kind of what we're talking about, like getting enough sleep to me is a way of being able to have enough arousal during the day. you know, exercise or these medications, just different ways of being able to access arousal. Like if you don't sleep, you can't access arousal during the day.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So, okay, well, I'm going to hold that model in mind and I'm going to keep testing it to try and destroy it as we go forward. Let's talk about the medications since you raised those. And, you know, the first one I ever heard about was Ritalin. Let's start with Ritalin. How often is Ritalin used nowadays and what is Ritalin doing neurochemically?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And what are your thoughts on Ritalin as a useful drug for childhood and adult ADHD? And I'm happy to repeat those questions.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So does that mean that if you're an identical twin and your twin has ADHD that there's a sort of essentially a 0.8 probability that you'll have it as well, or is this through the... Yeah, I mean, heritability is a little more technically sophisticated and it's about the variance due to... Sure.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So these are, as you said, straight white males who have psychotic episodes on their ADHD meds and continue to seek those meds because they, quote unquote, like the experience. It feels like a manic high, the high dopaminergic state.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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What are the options for people that think that they may have ADHD? Let me phrase it differently. Someone comes in and you, they have, you know, let's say an adult, they have five of the 18, um, well, criteria, they meet the criteria for ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Do you tend to, well, after telling them about sleep, food, exercise and relaxation, after that's squared away, if the decision is to medicate, do you, and assuming they're not on any other medications,

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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which cluster in this two sets of clusters that you described before the amphetamine type, the Adderall, Vyvanse, et cetera, versus the, I realize you put Ritalin at the top of the bottom cloud, Welbutrin, Ritalin, Modafinil, you mentioned Cymbalta, which cluster do you go to first?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And we cover their relative advantages and disadvantages. We also talk about the use of caffeine for focus and how caffeine can interact with those various drugs. Dr. Cruz also educates us on how specific behaviors like our sleep timing, so not just the amount of sleep we get, but when we sleep, as well as our meals, our exercise, how all that can shape our levels of attention and focus.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Do you worry about strain on the heart with amphetamine products? Just even if it's relatively low dose over time, just the strain on the calcium channels and on the on the heart. Is it true that stimulant-based medications for ADHD can, quote-unquote, weaken the heart?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So if somebody presents as having ADHD as an adult and they've never touched stimulants, would you start them on Ritalin, Welbutrin, or something in the Adderall Vyvanse cloud?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Could we go so far as to say, and I suspect the answer is no, but because nowadays we're hearing more about the possibility, I want to highlight possibility, of high THC cannabis causing psychotic episodes. This is something I've stressed on this podcast on social media. I took a lot of heat for this from the traditional press.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And then ironically, they're now putting out information that essentially speaks to the same. I'm not saying this happens in everybody, but there's certainly a possibility there. Would you say that if somebody is a regular high THC cannabis user, that they are at greater risk to developing psychosis if they're taking these stimulant form ADHD meds?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Especially as I understand, we had an expert from the cannabis research community on an edible form in particular. It's harder for people to control the dosage. Whereas when people use inhalation as a means to deliver, it seems like they kind of find the right plane without going overboard more often than with edibles in any case.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I've heard this, that for some people, cannabis can help them focus. And I'm certainly not one of those. But It certainly is interesting. As long as we're on cannabis, excuse me, as long as we're discussing cannabis, neither of us are on cannabis to my knowledge, maybe I could just ping you for kind of the relationship between various compounds.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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that people use that are available over the counter or with sort of online access to these compounds and ADHD symptoms specifically. And then at some point I'd like to return to the amphetamine-based drugs. So let's just start with nicotine. So these days there's increased use of nicotine pouches, gums, not just smoking, vaping, dipping, and snuffing. And it's certainly a stimulant.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And certainly a lot of people, in particular young males, are using it more often. The traditional media is now trying to create this kind of picture of nicotine being part of the kind of wellness and fitness community. But in my observation, Many, many more people outside of that category are using it.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So what in your experience happens when somebody with ADHD, let's assume they're not medicating in any other way, starts dabbling in nicotine use. And let's assume they're going to do this in ways that do not cause cancer because the smoking, dipping, vaping, snuffing part is what causes the cancer. Let's just talk about the compound nicotine.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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What about caffeine and in particular energy drinks? These days, there's just seems to be an explosion of drinks that include caffeine, but also fairly high dosages of things like taurine, alpha GPC, theanine, you know, so tyrosine. So, you know, things that are thought to generally amplify the production or release of neuromodulators like dopamine, acetylcholine and so forth.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Very interesting. I mean, as I've said several times in this podcast, I think caffeine is a wonderful drug, mostly because I love the things that comes in. Yerba Mate being my preferred source of caffeine, but also coffee. And it certainly increases my focus. It's a narrow plane though. Two sips too many, and I can start feeling myself veer toward more lack of focus.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It doesn't seem to have a very... pervasive effect and and dosing it on an empty stomach versus after eating it's it i mean i'm not that precise about it but i don't see it as a very um reliable stimulant it's more to get to a plane of just normalcy for me given how much i've been drinking it since i was a teen really I think most people are similar. They drink it to feel normal.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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L-theanine certainly is being added to a lot of caffeine-containing drinks because it seems to take the jitters off, and the assumption being that people can consume more of that. that drink has a consequence.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Yeah, this is in keeping with the green tea hypothesis, which I believe green tea is enriched with theanine. You are somebody who quite refreshingly to me has talked not just about prescription drugs and behavioral tools for ADHD, but also actually, I think years ago, you were the first person to first share with me the data about fish oil and the EPA. omega-3s for depression.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Those studies were starting to come out. We were talking about those studies. And nowadays, I think while there's still a little bit of controversy out there about fish oils, I think most everybody believes that getting high quality omega-3s from good clean sources, including fish oil, is mostly beneficial or beneficial. What about fish oil for ADHD in particular?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And what threshold dosages are relevant here?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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You probably need to get it in liquid form to make it so it wasn't so expensive. But I find this recency effect incredible, which you mentioned a few moments ago, that And I think this is helpful for people to hear. Certainly it is for me. We hear studies over the years have explored fish oil for cardiac benefits. And then more recently, as I understand, these have not been demonstrated.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And there seems to be a focus on the recent studies as if the old ones don't exist. That's essentially what you described for both cardiac and ADHD. I think it's really important. We hear this with alcohol too. I've been involved in this debate. I don't care if people drink one way or the other, provided they take care of themselves and others. And if you're an alcoholic adult, don't drink.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And if you're a kid, don't drink. But people want to drink a few drinks a week. I don't have a problem with it. But it's remarkable that every time a study comes out showing a mild benefit of moderate alcohol, use, that seems to be the highlight and then everything else is forgotten. And the inverse is also true.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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One would think that the meta-analysis would include all as many good studies as possible, but I think it's important to understand that people hear that that's not always the case. Just because there's a meta-analysis doesn't mean that it included all the relevant studies. So I'm just restating. Thank you. I make it a point to try and get one to two grams of EPA per day just as a general mood.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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You know, I'm not clinically depressed, but just to support my mood, to support focus, to support well-being, including cardiac function.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Metina. Metina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion, and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So I add hot water and sip on that thing, and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long, and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. You're one of the first people that I ever heard discuss the gut microbiome and ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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This is me giving you credit for being way ahead of your time. I don't know how you are receiving praise, especially on camera and with microphones. But I just want to say that it was over a decade ago that I heard from you about –

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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EPA and fish oil for depression and other things about circadian rhythms, an area that I'm familiar with, and just the critical importance of circadian health for everything that we're talking about today and more and on and on. And so, again, thank you for raising these points, even if they turn out to be minor effects. I think nowadays we hear about the gut microbiome

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I may have actually heard the words gut microbiome first from you. Gosh, yeah, that would be well over, that would be almost 20 years ago. Remarkable. So gut microbiome, what do we know about the gut microbiome and supporting it in ADHD?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Do you do anything to support your gut microbiome just with your knowledge of the relationship between gut and mental health? Does it impact your behavior at all in terms of choices?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Great. If that's where we're at, that's where we're at. Before we go back to some drugs, I wanted to ask about behavioral tools for exercise. I've seen some of the literature claiming that certain video games might actually be useful for training focus. I've managed to find a few papers that talk about focus and meditation tasks that kids in particular, but adults may be able to get better at.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And that, of course, is relevant not just to people struggling with attention and focus or who have ADHD, but to everybody. Dr. Cruz isn't just a psychiatrist. He also has a background in circadian biology research, and he offers the intriguing idea that ADHD and other deficits and focus may in many cases be the consequence of a misregulated circadian rhythm.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I mean, are any of these brain training games to get people better at focusing? Are any of them known to be worthwhile according to like real data or clinical observation?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Do you recall if the study of that device or the study of that video game has a conflict of interest? Was it run by the company?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Yeah. I should just say that I've... followed his work for some years. He's a neuroscientist. I know people who have been in his lab. He's known for doing very, very high quality and stringent work.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I've made it a point to put social media on a old phone. So those apps are only on that phone. I don't even know the number to that phone. If I need to post something, I airdrop it onto that phone. And this has helped tremendously in segregating that activity and limiting it.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It also means that if people send me something which would otherwise direct me to social media, it's much more difficult for me to go look it up. It's helped tremendously. I just pass it on because it's one of the things that's really allowed me to restrict my social media time. And yet still be, you know, in keeping with the fact that I think social media has its uses. I post there, et cetera.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I do too. And I think it also helps, at least in my experience, to do things that are very different than social media as well but still consuming content. So I make it a point to read from an actual physical book. a bit each day or night. Also, because I was raised doing that and writing by hand, it's just sort of in keeping with the way that my brain was wired.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So maybe that's more specific to me and my generation. But I find that when I'm doing those other activities, when I go onto social media, it feels more like a departure from the rest of life as opposed to the other way around. But in any event- I'd like to talk about some compounds that are not so typical, meaning some people may have heard of these, but most people probably haven't.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And they are somewhat novel to me. The first one is guanfacine. What is guanfacine and why is it sometimes used for ADHD?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night. warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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No, that's an important point. I'll just quickly throw in, if I may, that the NMDA, the N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptors are the ones that typically are associated with synaptic plasticity, although the AMPA receptors can do that too. But what Dr. Cruz is referring to is the fact that guanfacine indirectly modulates those pathways. So the longer duration to get the effect,

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It sounds like could be at least partially explained by a real change in neural wiring, as opposed to with you use Cymbalta and Welbutrin as examples of fast changes in neurotransmitters and neuromodulators that led to this. very quick effect in this patient that left your office, got downtown, and was already experiencing effect.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Put differently, sounds like guanfacine and clonidine, not to be confused with clonopin. Clonidine could help ADHD, but might take longer for the effects to manifest than the other drugs that we typically hear about.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Let's talk about modafinil. and are modafinil by extension. We hear about modafinil a lot in communities like the tech community and communities where people are trying to quote unquote cognitively enhance. What is modafinil? What does it do? What doesn't it do? How might it be useful for ADHD?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Even though I've never tried modafinil provigil, that people that I know who have, and I know one who has for treatment of real narcolepsy, so he's narcoleptic, but others who take it for ADHD and for work focus and cognitive enhancement, People who take modafinil and are modafinil really like it.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I don't know if it has any reinforcing property, but today is the first that I've heard that it has this dopaminergic aspect. But they seem to really like it and rely on it. Have you seen a kind of a dependence form?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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What about within the category of Adderall, Vyvanse, and the stimulant type treatments for ADHD? I don't want to say what are your go-to favorites because that makes it sound very non-clinical. But You know, what are the general trends that you've observed and that others have observed clinically or in any studies about preference for long acting drugs versus shorter acting drugs?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And maybe this is also a good opportunity for you to be able to chime in about drug holidays, you know, taking weekends off or things of that sort.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'm fascinated by this relationship between kind of optimal structure and difficulty or at least optimal structure versus having some margins for exploration at one's job. I realize it's very difficult to throw out kind of pan statements about what sorts of work and professions are going to be best for people with ADHD.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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He tells us how to test that idea and potentially how to fix it. By the end of today's episode, you'll understand what stimulants do, the possible origins of ADHD in both kids and adults, and both the behavioral and drug treatments and non-prescription approaches to overcoming brain fog and focus challenges.

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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They're not feeling too jarred, too revved up. Yeah, we don't really have a language for these things, right? Hence the bad speed language before cracked out, bad speed, smooth. Yeah. Because what we're talking about here is the gestalt of the subjective experience of all these neural and chemical mechanisms. Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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In your clinical observation, can you perhaps point us to kind of clusters of professions where people with ADHD tend to gravitate toward because they have sufficient or even hyper proficiency there? Like would we say like the creative arts where, you know, as long as they can get themselves to the theater, they tend to do well when

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I know that there are a lot of listeners and viewers who have tried these things or are considering or at one point used them. And a lot has evolved in this realm of chemistry for ADHD. But that's very helpful. Yeah. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure that I ask you about something that's been on my mind a lot in general, but in particular as it relates to ADHD, which is time perception.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And I'm basically obsessed with time perception. I've long been fascinated by the fact that we can find slice time. When our arousal is high, that's what presumably gives people the kind of slow motion effect in very stressful environments versus when we're relaxed, our frame rate on life goes down and it's all very dynamic. It's important our brains are able to do that.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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But someone recently told me the following. Her partner has ADHD and she said that the big rescue to their relationship came when they together read a book about ADHD and something in there read something like this, that people without ADHD keep track of time, whereas people with ADHD don't, but they do know the difference between now and not now, but they're not tracking time.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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They know that what they're doing in the moment is not what they're going to be doing later or what they did in the past, but they're not tracking time the same way. And I think this ties back to this interest-based attention system. What do we know about time perception in ADHD And by extension, do you think that these drugs are working in part to change time perception?

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Improv, I'm using extreme kind of almost silly examples, but those are professions indeed, versus a job where people have quote unquote banker's hours, where it's nine to five. I could see that being an advantage, also being very difficult. And of course, or accounting where literally decimal points matter and every, Every digit counts. So are there sort of clusters?

Huberman Lab

Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Thank you for those reflections. Really, I want to say thank you on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching for doing the work you do. You were invited here today because you have an absolutely encyclopedic understanding and knowledge of ADHD and the clinical treatments. And I've watched your YouTube channel and we'll provide links to all your various resources.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I'm looking forward to your upcoming book, however long it takes. I'm sure it'll be spectacular. different angles, behavioral, supplement-based, nutrition, life and organizational, life organizational aspects. And of course the medication, the pharmacology, the neuroscience, and the ways that those different nodes interact with one another, because of course they do.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So I just want to be absolutely clear how grateful we are for sharing all this knowledge. A lot of people struggle with attention issues, regardless of whether or not they have a full-blown ADHD or not. A lot of people have been treated for it. Some people are still wondering if they should be or not. And so today's discussion was nothing short of spectacular.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So on behalf of everybody, I want to just thank you for doing what you do and for coming here to educate us. Thank you so much. Thanks. I'm gobsmacked. So Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. John Cruz. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

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Improve Focus with Behavioral Tools & Medication for ADHD | Dr. John Kruse

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. John Kruse. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Pavel Satsulin. Pavel Satsulin is considered one of the premier strength training and fitness coaches in the world.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I'm a fan of dips. I like dips a lot. I heard you say that some years ago, you said that you were using dips for economy of time. And I started getting into dips. I Um, haven't quite figured out the best way to load dips once, because once you get past 15, 20 repetitions of the body weight dip, it gets, I don't know, it turns into something else. Sure.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Love it. There seems to be an over-reliance nowadays on pre-workout stimulants. I'm a big consumer of caffeine in the form of yerba mate and coffee. I'm old school that way. Not that I won't. Yeah. You still drink coffee every day?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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These days there's a lot of emphasis on just trying to get as absolutely wired and geared up for training. And I think that in part contributes to why people feel this post-exercise fatigue. They hit the gym hard after a pre-workout and then they're doing their post-workout shake and a bunch of – carbohydrates to replenish their glycogen.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And then of course, two hours later, you want to take a nap. I mean, it's amazing. Anyone could study or do anything at that point. I think that's very different than the kind of training you're describing. So I'd love your thoughts on stimulants generally and how they can support or hinder performance. And I'm also curious about

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10147.569

Just what's lost in that model in terms of learning how to cycle one's energy up and down. You know, several times today you've mentioned this thing of the ability to relax the muscles and relax the nervous system in between sets, maybe even in between reps, who knows.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10168.968

Yeah. So maybe we talk about stimulants. Before we started today, we were talking about when stimulants can actually hinder performance, when they can help. And then maybe we talk about the cycling of tension and relaxation. Because I look at training physically as a as a venue for exploring nervous system function and control over nervous system generally that one can apply elsewhere.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10189.581

So that's the kind of theme I'll just roll out onto the table.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1028.441

Uh, it turns into aerobic exercise perhaps.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

104.367

I do think that pursuing strength as its own thing, independent of muscle growth, which we hear so much about these days, everyone wants hypertrophy, grow muscle, this and that. Pursuing strength as its own thing is a tremendously valuable endeavor. Today, you're going to learn how from the world's premier expert in this topic. You're in for a very special episode with Pavel Satsulin.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1040.236

I'm trying to stay in the lower rep range today. I'll talk about this with you more because I think a growing number of people, both men and women who are starting to do weight training or really incorporate strength training into their program are seeking a combination of strength and perhaps endurance as well without putting on too much size. Maybe size in some select body parts.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10433.376

Would you mind before we go to the next question, if I just share with you a result that I just wanted to plant in your brain, because I've been excited to tell you about this, because it's new results from the field of neuroscience that I don't think anyone's discussed anywhere, but I think you might find interesting for your... sake of discussion here, but also- Thank you, Andrew.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10449.941

Looking forward to it. I didn't do this study. I wish I had. The study, very briefly, is interested in the neural basis of choking, not choking someone out or not anything else related to choking, but when one feels that the stakes are really high and suddenly ability falls away. What is that?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10469.657

So what they did is they developed this game where essentially the potential payoff in this game while recording from neurons in the brain is either low, medium, or very high, or the occasional jackpot. Like you could just win the whole thing. And the payoff is very, very considerable. Then they looked at the amount of upper motor neuron recruitment.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10490.543

So essentially the areas of the brain that drive coordinated muscular behavior or action. And what they found is that it basically scales with the level of reward. So you get more neuronal engagement as the reward scales up. However, every time the jackpot was offered, it over-engages too many motor neurons. And so this notion of like choking when the stakes are really, really high.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10516.294

It's like spillover of like it's like too much. We could call it too much excitement, but it's not adrenaline in this case, although that's probably associated with it. But you think, oh, great, you know, I'm going to get an award. I'm going to get a bigger award, even bigger award. Okay. Oh, my goodness. This could change everything. And all of a sudden, performance just tanks.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10533.127

And so it turns out it's a brain thing at the level of over-recruitment, which just speaks to this idea of being able to maintain arousal within a certain range. Yeah. is an essential skill to any performer. I just thought I'd share that because it's a fun set of results. And since I was a little kid, if I learned something, I have to share it with somebody who I think might care.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10552.867

So if ever people wonder about why people choke, it is hyperarousal at the level of the brain, apparently not so much the body.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10791.813

I love this concept of just learning to push on the accelerator, push on the brake, and to play with disinhibition as a First person to come on this podcast, even among the neuroscientists I've spoken with, to talk about disinhibition. Really? Thank you for bringing that up.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

10807.586

That's a beautiful concept and an important one for how we function.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

11025.5

Do you recommend actually avoiding training to muscular failure?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

11179.075

The neurons are trained to complete the execution of the movement.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

11233.262

The crossovers between physical training and mental pursuits are astonishing to me. As we're talking about this, avoiding going to failure, I'm in the process of writing my first book. I know you've written several books, and I'm finding it to be very different than anything else I've ever done. And the experienced writers tell me that you should end on a Thank you. Thank you very much.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1138.51

What about specialized training for grip strength? I believe that if somebody's large, if they can squat 500 pounds, if they can deadlift 600 pounds, I don't really care. The question is, can you open the pickle jar? Sure. This is a critical home test.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

11553.757

I I

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12150.838

Yeah, I completely agree. These are inspiring stories, truly inspiring. People of all ages should pay attention. It's not done in one leap. There's the progressive nature to it. And I think not training to failure is resurfacing in my mind now as we have this discussion. You know, the idea isn't to grind. It's to just grease the groove, get in there and do it as a practice.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12175.884

Actually, I'm going to change my language around this. I realize that when I call it a practice as a noun... it's not as effective as practice as a verb. I'm going to practice. Okay. Not that just for me, this is just my own internal thing.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12188.932

You know, my neuroses insist that I share this, but I do think that semantics are important as you pointed out before, because it has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves and what we think we're capable of. It starts with being inspired to try something, but also like I didn't grow up in a particularly athletic family. You know, not, none of us are,

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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unathletic, but I didn't think I could be, you know, reasonably strong, have decent endurance, and I wouldn't consider myself an athlete by any stretch. You're being too modest. But my consistency. I have confidence in. If I bite down into something, there's a good chance I'm going to do it for the next 30 years.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12302.97

So folks in your 20s and 30s get going on it now, and we'll have a podcast in a couple of decades to check back. Send us a note or put in the comments. I'd love to talk about body weight training. I love, love, love the book Naked Warrior. Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12318.417

I got that book initially because in the early days of starting my laboratory, I was traveling a ton, and I didn't always have access to gyms, and I wanted to try and grease the groove when I arrived in my room in the middle of the night in Germany or whatever. Um, I still have not succeeded in doing pistol squats on both legs. So one is I have some dominant and weakness, uh, as it were.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12343.261

Um, but I, without any natural strength ability, uh, to speak of, uh, was able to learn one arm pushups, um, uh, one arm pull ups. I'm not there now. I have to return to that level of, of upper body strength. Um, but. It's remarkable what one can do with body weight training. And you describe some really beautiful progressions in the book. I highly recommend this book, folks.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12366.968

So maybe we could just take the push-up as an example and a handstand push-up as the extreme of that, right? What I love so much about that book is, for instance, you talk about doing a push-up against a wall is trivially easy for most people. Doing a handstand push-up freestanding, very difficult.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But there's a series of progressions in between that maybe you could describe to us that once you realize that, oh, I can work through this over time. And if I'm not in a rush to get through it and I just do these a few times a week or more, or a few times a day, a few times a week or more, I could do a handstand push-up freestanding or a pistol squat or a one-arm push-up or a one-arm pull-up.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12409.242

It's not outside one's reach at all. Absolutely. Yeah. So could you fill in some of the gaps? So getting people to think about the kind of physics of this and the principles behind it. It's such a valuable system and one that is a lot of fun too.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

125.576

He is truly in a class all his own when it comes to fitness and strength training. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

12849.578

I haven't explored kettlebell training so much. Whenever I've tried the standard kettlebell swing, just kind of if there is such a thing, but, you know, between the legs, two-handed kettlebell swing, I tended to get some right side lower back pain, medial glute thing. And I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly. And I...

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1309.008

Interesting. I started incorporating farmer's carries thinking it was going to improve my grip.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13318.01

I'm going to have a few questions in the upcoming months about kettlebells. I'll try not to bother you too many times, but I'll, I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you. I'll use the course as a guide, but I'm determined to, to derive some of these benefits of kettlebells because kettlebells have been around me for, for over a decade now.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13337.835

And I, I just haven't quite taken to them, not through some aversion, but I'm going to approach it correctly. I love the body weight work. The body weight work. I don't know. Maybe it's, takes me back to PE class when I was in high school or something, when we do these fit tests.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13353.455

It's usually some pull-ups and push-ups, a reach and a run or something like that, like a straight-legged toe reach, who knows if it's a meaningful metric. But in any case, something so satisfying about going from struggling with push-ups to being able to do a one-arm push-up or something like that. And you describe it in how to make that progression in the book.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13423.869

It is awesome. And I love that strength training, resistance training is starting to really make a showing here in the U.S. and the general public. I think it's one of the best things to happen in the last few years. And this discussion, your knowledge is going to put even more momentum behind that.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13610.855

Yeah. Amen to that. And I appreciate you highlighting the London cab drivers experiment. Your knowledge of neuroscience is truly impressive. You're way too generous. Thank you. No, it's true. No other guest on here has discussed long-term depression, which it's... My dad said, Andrew, you know something my dad taught me early on?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13661.077

Kids and young people training. I don't know what the going word is now as to whether or not there's a, you know, too young to what, to resistance train age. You know, some people say there isn't, um, When I was growing up, it was thought that if you squatted heavy or you deadlifted heavy before you reached your natural limits of your height, that it could, quote unquote, stunt your growth.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13684.547

I'd like your comments on that. But based on what we were just talking about, it seems that if a young person is interested in developing a super skill in one area, one sport, okay. But there's a real trade-off to that. And perhaps what we should do as kids is a little bit of soccer, a little bit of swimming. Sure. A little bit of gymnastics seems like a wonderful all-around sport.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13706.361

Maybe a little archery. Try a bunch of things, some ballet.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13745.589

Yeah. And psychologically sometimes too. We had a guest on here who's, uh, become a psychologist, but she was a concert level, uh, violin player then injured her finger. And it was like the most devastating thing. You know, when we put all of our sort of identity into one thing, um, sure you get your Michael Jordans and you get your, uh,

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1383.13

30%.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13835.976

Yeah, previous guests, you may know him, Josh Waitzkin of, you know, chess prodigy fame, he's gone on to do several things at world class level by severing from the previous endeavor completely. He hasn't picked up a chess piece since he was 16, which is remarkable, pivoting to other things.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13853.961

But when one looks at the data on child prodigies, very few of them are like Josh, most of them don't actually succeed in doing anything else at a very high level, except

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13863.68

hopefully survive and thrive in their personal life, who knows, after being ultra successful as a young child, probably because their nervous system is so, you know, they grease the groove so heavily for one endeavor, it's very hard to cross over. Josh is exceptional in that regard. Well, exceptions prove the rule usually. Exactly.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13884.737

Um, not to say too mechanical and specific, but I'd love to talk about abdominal or rather core work. Sure. Uh, another thing that I love in the naked warrior are the abdominal exercises. I must tell you, um, after years of doing some crunches here and there in different, you know, for whatever this class or that class are trying to,

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13904.69

I never really cared about having my abs defined for its own sake. One should probably be able to at least contract their abs, okay?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13914.778

Right, right, right, exactly. But there's some wonderful exercises in there about learning to brace the entire body and some- dare I say, some rather unorthodox ways of assessing stability at the level of the core. I'm thinking about the plank where somebody tries to either kick you over or push you over. This might sound violent. This is not where you start, folks.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13935.356

But I never thought I could do like hanging pikes, for instance. Now pikes are a standard part of my weekly routine. I love doing five sets of five of hanging pikes. Great, great. And And I will tell anyone that decides to go down this path that when I first tried to do a pike, I failed miserably.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1394.037

That's a heavy kettlebell. 30% of your body weight? Yeah, I mean, I'm 210 pounds.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13952.532

I tried an L-sit, failed miserably, tried to hang from the bar and just getting into a chair position and could just barely hold that. The progressions are what matter, right? Slow progression and patience. Now, five sets of five pikes, trivial for me. But I just want to emphasize that when I started... I was far, far away from that.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

13973.83

And it's the progressions in the book that really helped me and I've maintained that pike ability. So thank you for that. And I say not to necessarily to highlight what I can do, but that to highlight what I do believe most anybody can do. If you put the work in.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

142.503

In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Pavel Satsulin. Pavel Satsulin, welcome.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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pass you know switch hands off and then eventually build up to running and obviously build up gradually held like a suitcase yes only only like a suitcase okay yeah there's a podcast um led by a guy named cam haynes he's a bow hunter he's one of the people that really brought extreme fitness and ultras to the sport of bow hunting and is legendary there and for his podcast he has you carry the 72 pound rock up it's about a thousand feet of elevation in the oregon wilderness and

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1470.882

I've done it. It's hard because of the shape of the thing. And so you're moving it from shoulder to, you know, to football carry to, you know, infant carry. And you're not talking about that. You're talking about suitcase on the right.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

14713.55

Thank you. Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1485.41

Are you trying to crush the grip while you're doing it?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1490.013

And you're running at 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

14975.195

Yep. Pavel, I must say, this has been a spectacular voyage through.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

14987.966

Thank you. And I'm going to just embarrass you a little bit further by telling you more positive things about you. Because I noticed it makes you uncomfortable. It's perhaps the only thing that makes you uncomfortable. But in all seriousness, I can't sense any discomfort. I want to just thank you for a number of things that are reflective, I'm sure, of what other people are thinking.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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First of all, the level of rigor that you've approached this whole thing of strength and fitness and flexibility and breathing and every one of these topics, too many to list off just now. It's remarkable. It's really fantastic.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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This comes through, and it's rare these days, but it's rare in any age to find people that are so dedicated to this level of rigor. in a given area. And it's so appreciated.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Yeah, we really, we need people like you. You're truly a scientist and a practitioner. You embody the principles that you discuss clearly, which is also important.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15055.825

Russians don't blush? No. No, got it. A topic for another podcast. So the rigor and the quality of the information that you put forth in your books and on this podcast and elsewhere, your online course is just absolutely spectacular. And I hope people noticed. I couldn't help but notice as an academic.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Your attention to proper attribution for people that have done the work and accomplished the various feats from whom you've gleaned various aspects of this knowledge is not to be overlooked because that's something that's so lacking these days. It's remarkable and it's important to highlight.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Yeah, it should go without saying, but it doesn't. These days it's more about who can glean the most attention as opposed to shed light on others and their work. And in doing so, as we've observed, absolutely nothing is lost and so much is gained. It's for everybody. So thank you. That's a proper attribution is spectacular.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15115.386

And I really look forward to sharing the resources where people can learn more. But already today, you've just provided such a wealth of knowledge for us. It's a real honor to sit here with you and to learn from you. I plan to listen to this podcast several times over and take detailed notes. We timestamp it all. And I just hope that we'll have the opportunity at some point to sit down again.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15136.888

And as well, perhaps, to get the opportunity to train together. So I personally could learn from you. But in the meantime, on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching. Thank you ever so much, Pavel.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15158.87

Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Pavel Satsoulin. I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did. To learn more about Pavel's work, including his books, his online courses, and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15195.748

I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

15231.15

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Pavel Satsulin. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

154.771

Thank you. Likewise. Thank you. I will say that you and perhaps one other person have truly changed the way that I think about fitness, the way that I train, and I'm super excited to talk to you today. So I'm withholding excitement. There are a bunch of different ways to think about this thing that we call fitness, strength, endurance, hypertrophy, and there's so much information out there now.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

1633.754

The motor neuron recruitment that you are describing is phenomenal. I have one reflection on this relationship between grip strength and longevity, just a little bit of neuroscience. You may be familiar with this, so forgive me if you are, but for the listeners as well. the motor neurons that control movement of the torso lie closer to the midline on both sides of the spinal cord.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The motor neurons that are responsible for more distal muscles, that is further from the midline, sit outside of those. And so as you get out to the movement of the digits, you know, the fingers and toes, those are the most distal from the midline. The rate and pattern of degeneration of motor neurons as a function of aging

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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even if there's no ALS or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or anything, is always outside in. We don't know why this is. It may relate to the presence of the enzyme SOD, superoxide dimutase. But it does seem that people that train their peripheral strength, they can offset some of that outside to in or distal to more close to the midline degeneration. So

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I believe, and this is just a belief, that it's not just correlative, that when one trains their periphery, they actually can offset some of the degeneration. It's also the way it's mapped in the brain, which is kind of a discussion outside of here. We need to get some diagrams up for people to really conceptualize that.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But it's also the case if you look at older people, 70, 80, 90, their calves are generally atrophied even if their torso is still very thick and muscular. if they did training. So I feel like obviously training the core and the torso is so key, but training the peripheral muscles, at least from the perspective of longevity, it makes sense why that would be important.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I'm going to try this running with the kettlebell on one side. I'll go out for a mile with it on the right. Oh, no, no.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I'd like to talk about concentric versus eccentric portions of a movement, concentric generally being the lifting phase and eccentric, of course, folks, the lowering phase. Is there a case for just doing concentric movements? Yes. Is there a case for emphasizing the eccentric portion? How does one balance those when thinking about soreness recovery and frequency of training?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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How do you conceptualize fitness? Meaning, do you look at things through the lens of, are we focused on nervous system, bone, connective tissue, or muscle? Do you look at things through the lens of anterior chain, posterior chain, hypertrophy, strength? I would just like to get your sort of high-level conceptualization of this thing that we call fitness

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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with the idea in mind that most people would like to have some level of endurance, some level of strength, and feel healthy, and presumably look however they want to look. But let's set aesthetics aside for the moment. How do you think about this thing we call fitness?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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He has pioneered the development of various programs to improve strength, which he calls the mother of all fitness. Indeed, today you will learn about strength as a practice, as a skill that can be applied to sports, that can be applied to general fitness, to getting leaner, to getting faster, and to improving your endurance.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I suppose if someone has access to the appropriate equipment at home, you could incorporate grease the groove into your entire day.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I've been eager to share with you some recent findings that are not my own, but that I think you might be curious about and that I think most people hopefully will be curious about as well.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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It's not greasing the groove specifically, but it provides a at least partial mechanistic understanding of how particular types of physical movement with this high motor neuron and attentional engagement can generate high levels of alertness that can be devoted to, as you say, writing the great American novel, perhaps.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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There's a guy at the University of Pittsburgh named Peter Strick, who for the first time started to map the connections between the adrenals and the brain. And he was able to do this using some really cool technology. The basic takeaway is the following, adrenaline released from the adrenals, as some of

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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the listeners may know, doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, but it turns out it binds to receptors on the vagus, which then stimulates noradrenaline in the brain and provides this increase in alertness. So then the question is, how do you get your adrenals engaged? You know, we can sit here and we can do a staring competition, which I'll lose for certain.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But, you know, there are all sorts of psychological tools. We get, you know, caffeine, et cetera. There are all sorts of ways to get cold water. But it turns out what Peter found was that there are particular locations in the motor cortex that that send basically a two-synapse connection, dysynaptic connection directly to the adrenals.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And the areas of motor cortex that engage the adrenals cause them to release adrenaline.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But just by sheer movement of particular muscle groups, or the core, as you were talking about before, like bracing the core, causes the release of adrenaline, which then via the vagus causes the brainstem area to release more adrenaline, wake up the whole brain essentially, increase learning and performance in anything.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

3357.62

As well, the stronger and stronger activation of the motor neurons, deliberate activation of the motor neurons, seems to engage adrenaline release. Now, to me, this was a wonderful way of trying to persuade people that they have internal control over this thing that we call motivation, that movement itself can increase adrenaline, which can increase the tendency to want to move.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And I'd like to talk about that. But I think I and so many other people were kind of raised and conditioned, at least in this country, to think, oh, if I want to increase my level of motivation, I need to like, I don't know, watch an inspiring video. That could be great. Or I can drink caffeine or an energy drink. And certainly that will do it.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

3397.805

But to me, the discovery that particular movements and particular muscles being engaged in activity itself changes the neurochemical milieu. I mean, of course it had to be, right? It's a big duh. But I think that, anyway, I was excited to share with you these data. I didn't discover them. That is news to me. So I read The Naked Warrior. I was closed when I read it.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But it's a wonderful book because it talks about body weight only exercises. And this concept of, for instance, like trying to crush one's fist on, you know, making a really strong fist on the other side and how that will increase your – your gripping ability on the other side, this kind of thing.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Yeah, so when you talk about doing a set of three or four repetitions or two to three repetitions at about 85% or 80% of one rep max, waiting 10 minutes and in the intervening 10 minutes going and trying to learn something important or physical or cognitive. This makes perfect sense to me because of the relationship of adrenaline, but also the way that you're...

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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the entire nervous system has changed in the intervening period.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Yeah. The unconscious genius aspect of it is so cool. And of course, I don't want to be disparaging of common gym programs these days, but I do feel like the way that most people train... I'll do that for you. Yeah, you'll do that. Yeah.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The way that most people train in terms of thinking, okay, I'm going to hit the gym three, four times a week, or I'm going to train chest one day and chest and biceps. While that has some value, I feel like for creating all around strength and hypertrophy, there's just such a...

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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incredible treasure trove of other things that you're sharing with us today that, that are just not discussed as much because people don't take the lens of the nervous system component. One, one thing that I'd love to ask about the nervous system in terms of training, adaptation and recovery is that I was weaned somewhat under the, uh, thought patterns of Mike Menser.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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This was in the Dorian Yates era. And I knew Mike a little bit. I paid for a consult with him over the phone. We So that had my mother asking, you know, why is this grown man calling our home? And why are you – in the old days, you had to wire somebody money. So I do. But it was so worthwhile because Mike taught me that the goal of training was to induce an adaptation.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Anything additional was not necessary. And in his case, he felt was counterproductive. Very infrequent training, et cetera. And it worked tremendously well to take me from like 150 pounds to 210 pounds, which I had no – need to do, but my body just reacted like crazy.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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But then again, I was 16, 17, and 18 years old in that time, probably could have done any number of different things and experienced similar results. Who knows? But the concept, of course, is that you train to induce an adaptation, then you rest, and then you allow the adaptation to serve the moving higher poundages in good form, this sort of thing.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The problem, however, is that, and Menser highlighted this, is that training of any kind, running, lifting, etc., taxes both the nervous system as a whole and the muscles locally and the connective tissue. How should we think about training and recovery?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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So when you describe grease the groove, I could imagine if I had a home set up or I'm going to the gym, I could maybe do four or five rounds of this training, but at some point it becomes counterproductive. Wow, a lot of great questions. I'm just trying to think about how to schedule this sort of thing, keeping in mind that the nervous system fatigues as a whole.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And then there's also the issue of local muscle fatigue or even the propensity for injury if you just overdo it. Sure. Yeah. So if we could just riff on this.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

42.59

As Pavel Satsulin explains, by building one's strength through body weight exercises, free weight exercises, and occasionally machines, one can develop incredible levels of fitness at any age. We discussed some of the spectacular examples of people in their 70s and 80s performing strength feats like 100 pull-ups per week. And we emphasize that one does not have to be seeking hypertrophy.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

439.319

What movements do you believe, if they exist, all people should include in their weekly routine someplace when thinking about how to develop, perhaps maintain, but for most people it's going to be the goal of still achieving some strength. Okay. Strength increase, excuse me.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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So for every month, you're training two weeks hard. The other ones, you're cruising, you're... Not as hard.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Nobody takes two, three months off these days.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern hemisphere, Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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What sets Juve Lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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based on what you just told us about Franco's training and the rest, seems that shorter training cycles might be advantageous, even just conceptually and practically. Like I've tended to break up my year into 12 to 16 week training cycles, been doing that for a long time.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

4983.139

And now that I'm 49, this is the year that I decided I was going to start modifying my training a bit because certain little things aren't working for me as well. You might laugh, I'm actually curious whether or not you'll laugh. I switched at some point to using the belt squat, these belt squat platforms. I just feel like that.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

5002.594

Yeah. The belt squat is essentially you stand on a platform. So you're on, unfortunately you're on display for everybody there, but that's not why I do it. You step up onto a platform. Sometimes it's called a pitch shark. Rogue makes a belt squat. There are other ones, of course, have no relation to any of those companies.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And you wear a big, thick lifting belt, but it's kind of sagging in the front as if you were going to attach a weight to it. But you attach yourself to it. Usually it's a cable or a lever. between your legs sounds scary, but that lever or cable can drop below the level of the platform you're standing on. And you can load up quite a bit of weight on this.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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What I love about it is, um, you can get, uh, very vertical if you want, or just a little bit of forward tilt, cause you can place your fingers on the, on the handles. You can grip them if you like the point being, there's a lot of degrees of freedom in terms of stance and, um, I like that you're not loading the shoulders. I, you know, I don't want to sound like a wuss, but I'll do it.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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You know, I, I moved from standard squats, back squats to front squats, then to hack squats. And then now I've been playing around a lot with the belt squat and really enjoying it because you can go really deep, can blast out of the bottom position. You can load up lots of plates on there if you have the strength to do so without the,

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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feeling that you're just compressing your whole spine or worrying about dropping the weight. So I'm enjoying working with it. I love your thoughts on belt squats. True.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

5079.143

But in general, I am hearing you and I'm thinking that moving away from this 12 to 16 week cycles is going to be advantageous because what I'm finding is that it's hard to account for life events in that way and plan training and travel and all this, but four weeks is kind of a manageable thing. This month, This is what I'm going to do. And of course, the months work together.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The body doesn't know the difference between February and March, as it were.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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It does, right. Exactly. The seasonal cycles are real elsewhere. But I'm thinking shorter training cycles might be a strong conceptual and practical framework. And yeah, I'd love your thoughts on both of those. The belt squat or legwork that's non-spine compressing. Mm-hmm. and shorter training cycles as a general theme that people might think of incorporating into their training.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

5250.669

Oh, I love that you said that. I barely touched machines early on in my training, dare I say, call it a career. But I've been doing it for more than 30 years, so I'll call it a – It's a good run. Yeah, it's a decent run.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And the bar, for those listening, not watching, is cradled in the crooks of the elbows in front of the body. Are the arms crossed?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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One does not have to be seeking getting larger muscles in order to get exceptionally strong. I myself these days am focusing primarily on trying to get stronger and build endurance for sake of health and for general life reasons. And because getting really strong turns out to be very beneficial. in every aspect of life. Today, you're going to learn how to get extremely strong.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I see. So sprint, perhaps, 100, 200, 300, 400 meters, and then jog back?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Every set, between every set. The 11th rep, I joke. People checking their phones.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And what sort of exercise? This is not sprints. This would be kettlebell swings, for instance.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Because this 30 seconds is hard. Yes. You're pushing.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. Now I've spoken before on this podcast with several expert guests on nutrition about the fact that most of us should be getting one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every single day.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Now, not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for your overall metabolism and health. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger and reduce sugar cravings. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you get enough quality protein without ingesting too many calories.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio. so that getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is extremely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. They also have a terrific venison jerky that's super convenient.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak every once in a while, and I'll snack on the jerky whenever I need extra protein and I don't have time for a full meal. Right now, Maui Nui is offering Huberman podcast listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts of venison and their products.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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It's perfect for anyone looking to improve their diet with delicious, high-quality protein. Supplies are limited, so make sure to go to mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman to get access to this high-quality venison today. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. What should I do during my rest periods?

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Interesting. I used to think that I would have this recurring sort of lower back hip thing that I finally feel is under control. And I used to think that it correlated with travel and something about maybe not sleeping as well and traveling perhaps. But what I've noticed is even if I just sit too much after training my legs hard, I end up with this back issue.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

7382.585

So just moving to a standing desk configuration after training legs, irrespective of travel, has really helped. And I think, I mean, nowadays there's all this excitement about walking. I don't know if you, you know, I don't know how much time you spend on social media, but like walking is the new thing for 2024. You know, people discovered walking to lower, you know, post-meal blood glucose.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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I mean, all stuff that was intuitive, great thing to do. We'll see what happens in 2025, what the new thing is, right? And I'm a fan of walking, but in no small part because it just feels like it loosens up everything after training. And I like to train early in the day if possible. And I notice a dramatic reduction in kind of aches and strains.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Anything into extension.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Wow.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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So yeah, that's... My Scandinavian relatives will chuckle at that. I feel like one of the... Again, I'm not trying to point out the ills of the fitness culture, but I feel like if I were to put up on a wall...

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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the two or three things that have caused the most confusion and, you know, reduction in people's potential results from fitness would be seeking the pump as its own thing and seeking soreness as its own thing. And then confusing panting hard and sweating a lot with intensity.

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The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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You know, I feel like those three things, you know, people think I had a great workout or my new trainer is, you know, I finished just completely depleted, you know, this, and then these are the same people that are complaining about an injury or they quit or they don't have the motivation because

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

7932.469

You know, they're not taking whatever pre-workout is required to generate that kind of quote unquote intensity. I'm not looking for agreement, but would you agree or disagree? I agree.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

7944.418

And then maybe by comparison, we could sort of throw up on the wall the things that we should be seeking when we train, as opposed to these kind of... You know, before I answer this question, since we're talking about the peripheral adaptations, you made a great point about seeking pump.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

8231.015

It seems like this is a repeating theme. And by the way, thank you for spelling that out. So for people that perhaps want to try something like this, and I intend to, four exercises. Three. Three exercises, excuse me, done each at roughly 70% of your one repetition maximum. So what you could do for about 12 repetitions, but you're only doing three repetitions. Rest a minute in between exercises.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

826.819

I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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And so this could be a Zurcher squat, pull up, dip, deadlift or something like that.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

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Okay, and this is going to increase endurance, right? but is also going to increase strength somewhat.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

839.923

Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

8547.014

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

858.779

Eight Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

87.741

You can add muscle if you want in parallel with that, or as Pavel Satsulin explains, you can pursue strength and flexibility for their own sake. And there's tremendous value for doing so. So today's discussion pertains to women, to men and frankly, to people of all ages.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

874.831

Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

8824.175

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

894.68

It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9153.834

whether or not one's talking about high volume or low volume or endurance or strength, quality, quality, quality.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9161.136

Everything else is potentially detrimental and frankly has added a lot of confusion to the fitness literature where people, I think, they're doing five sets of five or do I do 10 sets of 10? And if I may, this isn't my field of expertise, but

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

917.453

Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both your short and long term health is your body's ability to manage blood glucose or blood sugar to maintain energy and focus throughout the day.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9178.26

again, having been in and around it for a while, I feel like the message that keeps coming through that's going to deliver the results is every single repetition, high quality. The rest period, high quality. Whatever that may be, walking around, shaking it off. The structuring of the program, high quality.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9195.168

I think people are far too haphazard and seeking the pump and soreness and some sweat so that they can have their post-workout shake. Well, I'm not trying to be. And a selfie. And a selfie between every set. And just kind of check the box.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9210.356

Even for people that aren't competitive athletes, I think there's just such an enormous range of things to be gleaned from taking one's fitness training seriously. Even the word fitness is kind of a strange word. Training seriously, right? I've never even called it a workout. I think I picked that up from Mensa. You train. Or you practice. Or you practice. I like that very much.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9230.333

I also like the distinction between students and clients. That's a very – these are not just labels. I think they really – No, they're really not. Change our cognitive frame.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9342.065

Okay, so while one could use resistance training in order to generate strength and endurance, you explained how to do that, there are a good number of people out there, including myself, that sometimes like to get outside for a run or to hike, as you mentioned earlier about the rucksack.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9357.957

I'm not such a fan of the rucksack because of being pitched forward, but I like this idea of carrying the kettlebell and switching sides. Nowadays, they also have some weight vests that are a little bit more close to the body that distribute the weight better. What are your thoughts about going into the gym in order to do the strength training and then generating the endurance work elsewhere?

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

937.15

You want to keep your blood glucose steady without big spikes or crashes. I first started using levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods impacted my blood glucose levels.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9380.396

To be blunt, like how would one combine lifting and running in a way that allows one to get stronger and develop endurance, perhaps simultaneously?

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

946.878

And it's proven incredibly informative for determining my food choices when I eat specific foods and how I time eating relative to things like my workouts, both weight training and cardiovascular training, things like running and when to eat before I go to sleep to allow for the most stable blood sugar throughout the night. Indeed, using Levels has helped shape my entire schedule.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9607.112

Yeah, I like the fill an hour. I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour of actual work in the gym, maybe 75 minutes or so. I notice if I train longer than that, I pay a serious price in terms of post-exercise fatigue later in the day. I'd actually like to talk about this concept. I looked it up before sitting down today.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9627.765

There's a little bit of literature starting to emerge, not as much as I would like, about post-exercise cholinergic depletion. You know, so much of our ability to hold our attention is dependent on epinephrine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine release in the brain. And of course, muscular contractions, acetylcholine being the dominant transmitter from nerve to muscle communication.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9650.199

But this idea that if we exercise too intensely, or even if we just do cognitive work that's very intense for a period of time, that there's this post-exercise cholinergic depletion, and then we get this what people typically call brain fog, although that's not a real medical term.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

966.431

So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to levels.link slash Huberman. Levels has just launched a new CGM sensor that is smaller and has even better tracking than before. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9667.27

So I think from the practical standpoint, a lot of people who would like to train more for strength, train more often for strength, do strength and endurance work, The challenge sometimes isn't just scheduling it. It's that we feel depleted and tired afterward. Have you observed this? And is there a way to use strength training or other forms of training to improve cognitive function?

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9691.299

Because, you know, again, as you pointed out, only compromise is not solutions. But I do see a world in which one could use their physical training to give them a, for lack of a better word, a boost into the day. So you're getting stronger. You're developing your health. And you're also able to then lean into your day with more focus and intention. That would be the ultimate scenario.

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

982.594

Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. would a combination across the week of some sort of squat, let's say the Zurcher squat, perhaps a kettlebell swing or something else for a posterior chain, pull up and dip be a fairly comprehensive program?

Huberman Lab

The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

9946.85

I think it's a terrific answer. I like to leave the gym with some gas in the tank because, well, I get paid to think and to speak, as it were, not to lift, but

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett is a professor of psychology at Yale University and the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And we talk about emotional intelligence, which it turns out can be increased at any stage of life. So by the end of today's discussion, you will be armed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge and many new tools, many new protocols that you can immediately apply in your life in order to improve your relationship to yourself and to others.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So connecting the feeling and the reason for the feeling. Correct. As opposed to just labeling the field. Yeah, you need to know why. It's the why that you really have to deal with. How do you feel about emojis? From everything you're saying, they seem like more than benign to me. Yeah, same. I mean, I could imagine that the emojification of culture, as I refer to it.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1146.736

I don't think that's a real word. It's all right. It is now. Set up a Wikipedia page tomorrow. Emojification. is a serious problem because it's what we call in science too much lumping. In science we have lumpers and splitters, right? And both can have fabulous careers, but if you lump too much or split too much, you create more confusion and you often create problems.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1172.707

And I just see emojis as lumping this incredible set of different continuums within us that we call emotions into literally a small icon. And I can imagine this would lead to all sorts of problems, not just in communication, but in understanding our own emotions. Put differently, do you think that the use of emojis has degraded our level of emotional intelligence and processing?

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1216.914

Yeah, I mean, right off the cuff, I'll just say, you know, I'm familiar with both of those feelings. I know they're different. I can sense their difference. I mean, but the disappointment piece... Yeah, it could be directed outward or inward. I'd have to work systematically through until I found a violation of one or the other.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

122.14

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1235.198

So where an example applied to one and not the other, and it would take me a few minutes, longer than I want this audience to have to wait. There you go.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

140.848

BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all,

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1475.148

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1515.27

And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. You said that disappointment is when one does everything essentially correctly, meaning gave the approval.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about the issues that are most critical to you. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1573.038

as much effort as they could, et cetera, and it didn't work out. Versus anger, which is perceived injustice. Would you say that your response to not getting your yellow belt then, because as a fifth degree black belt now, clearly you got that yellow belt eventually. I want to hear that part of the story too. That you were experiencing anger, in this case, could we even call it inappropriate anger?

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Simply inappropriate because what you experienced really needed to understand was this notion of disappointment, but no one had taught it to you.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And third, expert therapy should provide insights, insights that are useful in allowing you not just to feel better in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but of course, to be better, to be better in terms of the relationship to yourself, your professional life, and to others, and of course, to things like your career goals.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1709.209

Yeah, online emojis and, you know, downward facing thumbs versus upward facing thumbs and this kind of thing and, you know, vomit emojis and things like that. Mind blown. I'm starting to realize that these may be doing far more harm than we realize.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1736.28

I'm thinking of instances where people are just using these with the intention of expressing their – But that the people on the receiving end experience a lot of self-criticism as a consequence, mostly kids, but adults too. And I know some adults that really can't handle somebody commenting on their Instagram posts like, big L or something like that. It's devastating for people.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1764.635

Or nope, or this kind of thing. It's also interesting because I see it even in the academic community, especially on Twitter, X, where I know that, sure, people reject each other's papers, critique each other's papers, but they do that with a degree of, um, intellectual nuance that, um, transmits a sense of care, right? If scientists really care, then they're going to do a careful review.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1786.604

Um, as much as we would all love the, this is a perfect paper. That's it. Um, no critique. When somebody critiques something that we do with, um, with an attention to detail, provided it's fair, we, we feel cared for. Totally. They care for the work and we care for the work.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1799.794

And so there's a, there's a relationship there, even if it's an anonymous review, but I'm shocked to see how, um, scientific colleagues I've known for decades, um, really how they comport themselves online. Like they'll swear, they'll come out, you know, they won't bother to punctuate things. They'll just sort of behave in a very, what seems to be a very activated way.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1822.798

Not all of them, of course, but it's been very interesting. The words that come to mind are, I feel like online, especially on social media, The kids are acting like adults and the adults are acting like children. And so there seems to be a kind of regression toward what I'm calling the emojification or the kind of high amplitude expression with blunt tools.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

183.55

With BetterHelp, they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you have these critical components of therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into your busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or looking for parking or sitting in a waiting room.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1845.033

I don't know what that is because I know these people, the reason I'm using the academic community as an example, by the way, it's cost some of these people their jobs, chairs of departments, not at Stanford or Yale, fortunately. But it's kind of striking to me the way that when we remove the face-to-face connection, when people will behave that way. And I use the

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1869.944

a parallel example of anonymous review because there it's anonymous. So in theory, they could behave however they want, but there's an etiquette. So it seems like online etiquette is very deprived of many of the important features that you're starting to lay out for us here.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

1982.829

Politicians sort of open themselves up to it. Yeah, they do. Public-facing people in general, I've heard, open themselves up to it. But politicians in particular, I think we sort of give the general public a pass to say almost anything about them. But it's not pretty.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

200.923

If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2012.051

I perceive it as evacutive. I look at that and I think, gosh, what they must feel inside to be able to say those things can't be good. But maybe it feels good to them. I don't know. I don't think I've ever made a negative comment. If I have, someone can call me out on it. Hopefully it was in sarcasm with a friend as the target and they were okay with it or happy with it.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2034.902

But I don't know what internal, emotional, or psychological state it would take to go say something cruel to somebody online.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2146.844

Can we provide a counterexample? for the anger versus disappointment that's on the positive valence side. What's a positive set of feelings that people often conflate?

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2166.469

I'm getting Fs all around. Good thing I became a biologist. Ecstatic and elated.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2178.47

And so I'm good at this.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

218.234

Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2223.878

Sorry to interrupt, but as soon as you describe contentment that way, and thank you for parsing those two, very useful to me. As soon as you describe contentment that way, I imagine, waking up and rather than thinking about what needs to be done and the things I want to achieve, which I want to achieve, they bring me joy. Throw in a third word there just to confuse myself.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2244.793

This notion of contentment, the way that you described, I could see might lead me to pay attention to how good it feels to have gotten some sleep. I sleep well most nights, but what a privilege that is. And to maybe feel the comfort of the comforter and the mattress for a moment before barging into the day. to chase happiness, as it were.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2304.211

Because you somehow feel like you're not living up to some standard.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2313.689

Here's where I get to appropriately make a joke about, because before we started, we were talking about East Coast schools versus West Coast schools. I was like, maybe you come West and that'll change, or maybe you're right where you belong there at the also phenomenal university that is Yale. But anyway, that's kind of inside ball stuff. East Coast University is amazing.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2332.708

Midwest University is amazing. West Coast University is amazing. Different perceived temperaments, but for sure. And styles, just look at the walking speeds, for instance, not just the weather, but yeah, you raise a very important point. We have a member of our podcast team that is like always in a great mood. He's always in a great mood. And it is for me, a reminder to be in a better mood. I'm,

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2356.323

Not somebody that I would say gets, I'm not moody. I don't change moods quickly, but I wouldn't say that my disposition is to be like Tigger-like and just happy all the time. But his energy around that doesn't drain me, but it makes me wish I was him.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

236.024

And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

24.696

He is one of the world's foremost experts on emotions, meaning what emotions are and how they regulate our relationship to ourself and others. Today's discussion gets heavily into how we should think about our emotions and the emotional expressions of others and when and how we should regulate those emotions.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2486.198

those things are readily available within less than a mile of here. We can point you in the right direction. It sounds lovely. The introversion, extroversion bit is going to prick up people's ears. It certainly did mine. I like time alone. I also like time alone in the presence of many people. In fact, I get my best work done always either alone in nature,

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2511.523

or in Manhattan, where there are people around me, but I'm completely isolated. I love that too. So how should we think about introversion and extroversion? These things get thrown around so much in popular culture. Are there some solid scientific studies that support that introversion can best be defined as blank and extroversion as blank? And I'm guessing there's a range there.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

252.353

I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2536.771

It's got to be on a continuum. It can't be two bins.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2626.329

You seem very outgoing.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

263.76

The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and it also has snoring detection that remarkably will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2636.864

When you say you don't necessarily like people that much, I realize you're joking. And I was just going to make sure to ask because I can't presume. That doesn't mean that you dislike people. It's just that being in the presence of a lot of people doesn't draw you out to want to be closer to or get to know all these people simply because they're there.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2655.954

Whereas an extrovert seems to really like forming and engaging in new relationships, old relationships, all relationships, relating.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

2720.064

Interesting. When I think of throwing a great party and I've thrown a few, what I like to think were great parties, it involves inviting a bunch of people over and then being able to stand back from a lot of it and not have to participate in all of it. I just like seeing friends that didn't know each other start to interact. That's cool. That's fun for me.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And then if I have to communicate directly with too many people at the party, I would definitely feel drained. I'm known to retreat to a room and take a nap or disappear. Yeah, so maybe you are more introverted. Yeah, I think so. Rick Rubin, who's world-renowned for his creative insights and – creativity and for being Rick.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I think once said on a podcast perhaps, or maybe he said this to me, that Tom Petty was the sort of person that basically didn't do anything besides write music and read books and interact with the small number of people in his inner circle. And the idea of leaving the house was just completely overwhelming to him.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Now, of course, people were always approaching him, but like really, really extreme introvert. Whereas Rick has described, and I won't name names here, um, other famous people, musicians and otherwise that. go out specifically to try and get the attention of fame. And if they don't, they feel absolutely isolated. Makes sense.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Even though they have people in their private life, it becomes a kind of extroversion requirement. I would imagine life is much harder for the extrovert in the long run because there's just so much need there.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. I'm excited to share that I'll be speaking at a health summit called Eudaimonia, taking place in West Palm Beach, Florida, this November 1st, 2024, through the 3rd of November, 2024.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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In that case, do you cold call on people? Whenever I'm teaching, I'm somewhat reluctant to cold call on people because I recall it can be terrifying. when suddenly you're sitting there taking notes, trying to, you know, organize your thoughts around the material, and then suddenly, you know, the whole room's looking at you.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And on the wrong side of the road.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Eudaimonia is an in-person event that offers science-backed tools, live fitness classes, and a range of treatments and protocols to optimize your physical and your mental health. I'll be giving a keynote talk with none other than Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on Saturday. As some of you may know, she's a former guest on the Huberman Lab podcast and has a terrific podcast of her own.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Super important. And by the way, my joke about driving on the wrong side of the road, I do realize that we drive on the wrong side of the road for Australians and those in the UK. So I'll do the touche for you. I'd like to take a brief break to thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function. Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Text messaging is an interesting example of communication that nowadays, depending on how many people have access to your phone number, can either feel like a wonderful source of filling the gaps on trains and while in transit and while walking to the car, perhaps, hopefully not while driving, although people seem to do that. And yet for the introvert, I can imagine that it might feel inundating.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It might feel kind of overwhelming. How do you feel about text messages? Because it's just yet another form of communication. I asked this for a very particular reason. I could imagine that extroverts love to text message. They love to receive and send text messages, that they can't stand a moment of downtime before boarding a plane. They're

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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They're excited that there's yet another form of communication at all hours of the day and night, whereas introverts would be less excited to text message. I also asked this in part because I want to protect the variable latency to respond to text option that I've tried to exercise in my life. But that seems to, well, doesn't really seem to work.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That's going to be on November 2nd, and we will discuss all things neuroscience and neuroplasticity. We'll talk about some of the benefits and protocols related to cognition and mood and much more.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I think most people assume, you know, if I walk up to you and I say hello and you wait 10 minutes to say hello back, I'll first think you're a little bit rude and then think you're a little strange. Whereas if I text you hello and I don't hear back right away, I might think you're busy. There's some wiggle room for interpretation, but I think...

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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What I'm really getting at here is do we tend to project the same latency expectation on text that we ourselves embrace? This seems like an important source of potential miscommunication, misunderstanding, and maybe worse.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yes, I'm happy to say it 100 times. No, because I mean, I feel this wash of like, relief and now I'm looking for the appropriate word because I'm talking to you. So I feel like I have to use the exact appropriate word. I feel, I feel emancipated because I also feel that as texting has become more routine and has crossed a number of different lines of formality and informality, right?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Not just with family members, but with coworkers and people we do and don't know and just met and have known for ages and You know, the jargon that we use with one group is different than the jargon we use with another. But I feel that texting in general has really degraded our ability to communicate verbally and in writing elsewhere.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Also presenting at Eudaimonia are other excellent scientists and clinicians who've appeared on the Huberman Lab podcast, including Dr. Sarah Gottfried, Dr. Zachary Knight, and Dr. Robin Carthart-Harris, along with nearly 70 other experts. To see the full lineup of speakers and topics and to register, visit eudaimonia.net, spelled E-U-D-E-M-O-N-I-A dot net.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Forgive me. I'm going to interrupt you too. I have no idea what it's like to be a teenager in 2024. So I caught myself. I have no place saying weird because there were things that I was doing as a teenager that I'm sure adults were like, that's weird. So I take that back. But if you think about how...

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That's an awesome friend.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yeah, I think this is such an important topic. I think because texting is so common and has been used to, you know, communicate so many different forms of human emotion in this broad bin format, I mean, how much can you really put into a text? I have some... friends and coworkers. And you can voice text. Which is like, then it's like. Right. Right. It's long.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And sometimes, well, there are issues with that too. I feel like it's enriched compared to texting, unless the text is carefully written out, punctuated. I mean, we can see the care that people put into certain texts or emails that they tip, and most people, including myself, don't, right? Texting is a short form of communication. Audio notes, voice memos seem like a step up.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I think what this has probably done is that it's made the phone call or the goodness, the handwritten card or letter, it's kind of raised that to the The pinnacle of care of expression. Completely.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yeah, I didn't outright set this rule in my relationships, but I would say with my coworkers, family members, and in other kinds of relationships, there's a rule, which is that we don't argue over text.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It's sure to be a terrific gathering, and I hope to see you there. And now for my discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. I'm excited to talk to you today about many things related to emotions. We hear the word emotions and we have all sorts of ideas about what they are, what they aren't.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But people do it a lot.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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You and I are both aware that there is neural real estate specifically dedicated to the processing of faces and specifically to the processing of human faces and specifically to the processing of the emotions. carried in human facial expressions. So, you know, this is a hardwired aspect to our species.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Wild. Can we talk about the energy pleasantness axes? Sure. And create a mental picture for people of what this is. I found this to be incredibly useful. If listeners or viewers have a pen or pencil and paper, you could map this out, but it's very easy to imagine in your mind. So maybe you could just tell us on the vertical axis.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Okay, so vertical axis is energy.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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We also hear about emotional intelligence quite a lot these days. And I have a feeling that the way it's discussed is often not the way it really is. So to just kick things off, Could you clarify for me, for everyone, what is emotional intelligence? What does it pertain to? And then maybe we can use that as a way to drill into the deeper question of what are emotions?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Wow. Maybe the next generations coming up are far more emotionally intelligent than ours, if I may.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I was going to ask, how do we resolve the contradiction between the message to feel our feelings versus to just recognize that the feelings are moving through us as this five-year-old gosh was and is able to do. Because I feel like it gets to the heart of a lot of what we hear in the psychological and wellness space, which is feelings are just feelings. They're transient.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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They represent all sorts of things. And we can get to the biological underpinnings or the childhood trauma root cause underpinnings, all sorts of things, genetics for that matter. Should we feel our feelings in order to best recognize them? I would imagine yes. Is there any value to suppressing our feelings or does that tend to just grow the feeling?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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What is known about this from the research literature? Because you see a lot of different opinions about this, but I'd like to know, have there been any experiments where people are placed into a negative or positive situation? emotion or are experiencing a negative or positive emotion and then intentionally try to suppress it?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Has there been any brain imaging and measurement of galvanic skin response? Like, does the emotion grow or does the emotion shrink?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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This is a very important aspect of our life because, as we all know, emotions are present with us from the moment we are born until the moment we die. So much like having a body, we need to learn how to work with our emotions in order to have the best quality of life. We all know that we are supposed to pay attention to our emotions, but at the same time, we are often told that we shouldn't

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Um, I'm guessing empathically attuned.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Um, although that's a, for those that know empathy is a, is a, involves a bunch of subcategories. So I want to acknowledge that pathically attuned. Um, I'm guessing that they have themselves some high, high emotional intelligence. Um, and the third is, um, gosh, I, my hope is that there be a, a, uh, high situational awareness.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Right. Because your uncle needed to see something subtle in your facial expression, or maybe not so subtle, but everyone else was missing it. But yeah, But to be able to detect that there was something that really needed – it was like a silent cry for help.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It's kind of going right by her.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So if I were to take an emotional intelligence test, would it have me looking at pictures of facial expressions, Would it have me reading paragraphs about emotional exchanges and gauging who felt what and why and how, that sort of thing?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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This is actually where my next question was going. So I'll just ask the question in the form of an answer. Is this like Jeopardy? I guess that's what you do. No, it's the other way around at Jeopardy. Sorry, you can see how many episodes of Jeopardy I've watched. That if people don't have adequate emotional boundaries and they are maybe even too empathically attuned

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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that someone they care about experiencing anger or sadness or frustration, maybe even with them, would shift their own emotions and not make them able to be available with the three qualities that you listed off before, in particular non-judgment, because now it's personal. And so it would undermine the process.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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It's actually the case that we don't have the time to be judgmental. It's far too energetically costly.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Those cappuccino machines can be scary.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh. I laughed before you said it was a mess. I just, your impression of the question, it's a. Maybe it drew to mind some experiences of mine.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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In thinking about people that can really help us by asking us the right questions or in thinking about how we can ask people the right questions to really help them and us gain an understanding of what they're experiencing. I'm recalling numerous instances in my life where there seemed to be the requirement for an excuse, like an activity excuse.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I currently have a very good relationship with my father, but I remember when there was a time where we had to talk about science or watches as an entry point to any conversation, let alone about emotions, right? And he's done a lot of work. I've done a lot of work. And I like to think we're much, we are much further down the road.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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We enjoy a very close relationship as a consequence of that work in part. But I think what you're describing really makes me realize that no matter who anybody is or what their age or what their background is, that as human beings, we don't just need permission, but we really should think about just having a conversation about how

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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others feel as opposed to making an activity a prerequisite for that conversation. And as I say this, I realize some people are probably thinking, oh boy, okay, so we're just going to sit around and talk about our feelings.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But my short response to that is yes, because when you don't do that, then I can say from experience, then pretty soon you're not participating in those activities with that person and potentially with anybody. I mean, I'm not saying that people become so unpleasant to themselves and others that they don't have any friends. I mean, okay, that's an extreme case.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But what I hear in the backdrop of everything you're saying is that it's not just about an education. It's really about a practice of giving ourselves and others permission to simply have a conversation about what one is feeling. as an exercise for both people to be able to explore that in the correct way. And there is a correct way. And you've described the ruler approach as one correct way.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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When I think about most uses of the words emotional intelligence, it seems to correlate, again, in a very non-scientific way, seems to correlate with one's ability to tolerate others' emotions and make sense of the emotions of others. For instance, I've heard it said before, not about me, that so-and-so has high emotional intelligence.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I'm letting that really sink in because, you know, I think these days we hear a lot about therapy. Fortunately, in my opinion, I think and I'm going to get the numbers only crudely right, but they're certainly in the right direction and amplitude.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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There was a survey done, I believe, at Stanford asking students how willing they would be to seek therapy if they were dealing with an emotionally trying time. And this was in the, I think, early and mid-90s. And the numbers that came back were very low, somewhere in the teens or 20% of students polled. Whereas nowadays, it's in excess of 80% or 90%. Very high. Yeah.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And I think that's representative of a lot of- Actually, can I give you another example of this?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Is this a pre-med course?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Okay. This is general undergrad. That was a joke against pre-meds. Love the pre-meds, but they are very grade conscious.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Of journaling about stress? Yeah.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Because in the presence of their child or someone else's kid reacting in a You're describing emotional intelligence as a self-perception as well. Yes.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Your joke about envy reduction is something I take very seriously. We did a four episode series with Dr. Paul Conti, who's a world expert in psychiatry. He's a psychiatrist and among the very, very best psychiatrists in the world by many accounts. And he discussed during that series, but also on other podcasts he's appeared in, such as my friend Lex Friedman's podcast that

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Envy is actually at the root of much of the evil in the world, small scale evil, large scale evil, and a lot of the despair that people feel. And I think it's a word that isn't discussed enough because like the sound of it is, it's kind of gross, right? Envious, envy, nobody wants to be associated with it. But fortunately,

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Dr. Conti described it as a natural human emotion in some cases, but I had no idea, and I don't know if he knows, but maybe he does through his clinical work, but I'll certainly pass along what you just said to him, that so much of the stress that I have to imagine good people, and these students are, after all, I imagine good people, they're not evil.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Not characterologically evil, let's hope, are experiencing envy. The wish to have more of what somebody else has, maybe something specific, which of course gets to these more common phrases of people feeling that they are not enough. Yeah. Which is going back to contentment. Right. Actually, oh, I didn't draw the arrow. Now I thought I drew the arrow. Between contentment and envy. Right.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So if one wants to combat envy, you can imagine that a program to combat envy might be perceived, if one didn't understand it, as a calling for people to just be content with less, which is not what we want, right? I mean, we want ambitious people in the world. We want people aspiring. We want people to have growth mindset.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And yet we don't want people to be stressed and have a pervasive feeling of envy inside either. So how would you make inroads into envy?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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How does that differ? Sorry to turn your own work back on you from admiration or inspiration. Like, wow, they, you know, like the... Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And so is our task, therefore, to do the equivalent of what, in my little anecdote, this other person was doing, to be able to parse one's own emotions in a fine enough way to understand the experience in kind of a third-person way that one can regulate their behavior, what they say, how they act?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That's all regulation. Conflict resolution is something that I think a lot about in any situation where emotions are discussed. And it brings me back to this earlier situation you were talking about where This woman said that she was going to find her child somebody to help him to intervene. And you were thinking, well, why not you?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Right, exactly. And now there's a whole field of feelings mentors cropping up. That actually wouldn't be such a bad thing.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That wouldn't be such a bad thing. Say it louder. I like that goal. Yeah. So when we were talking about that, one of the things that surfaced was this notion that some people have a natural empathic attunement or the emotion that the other person is feeling is a negative one and it's about us or about them.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And as a consequence, you know, we're not able to really be present to help the person the way that you helped your dad. Like he was frustrated with his wife. Yes. Had he been frustrated with you, it might be a little bit – little bit more challenging to say, hey, well, dad, maybe what you're experiencing in terms of your frustration with me is actually blank.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

5693.881

Yeah, because you're now in a tether with them. So to what extent is empathic attunement a positive trait? Are there people who are better at turning it off or directing it in appropriate ways than others? In a previous podcast that I did recently, somebody sitting right there in that chair told me, and I believe them, that I am codependent. It's the first time anyone's ever called me that.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Codependent. She defined it, she spelled it out, and it, in a very parsimoniously Wei explained a huge array of challenges that I've experienced to the point where I've been learning more about codependency. All right. Okay. Not easy for me to say even now. We're all interdependent. Interdependent, yeah.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Certainly depending on others is important, but certain patterns fall well under the umbrella of codependency. So I was like, okay. And even now I'm uncomfortable talking about it, which is part of the reason I'm trying to desensitize myself to the word itself, let alone drill into the process of getting through it. So-

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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How much is recognition of others' emotions and understanding of those as opposed to what is recognition and understanding of their own emotions factoring into this thing that we call emotional intelligence?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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The point being that if our emotions are so strongly tethered to others, we see that as empathy. We label that typically as positive, but it really diminishes our ability to be there for people if their emotions are negative and about us. I disagree. Okay, great.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Do we know where in the brain empathy resides? We hear so much about mirror neurons, but I think for those of us that have been in neuroscience and psychology long enough, we acknowledge, yes, there are appropriate conversations that include the words mirror neurons, but that they've been made out to be much more than perhaps they are in terms of empathy.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And they've become sort of the default description for all forms of empathy and understanding. And it's not just that. So what do we know about the brain science of empathy? Yeah.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yeah, I keep hearing that the way to do this properly is to ask questions. As opposed to telling people what they need to do. Your friend or this person who was an effective source of support in that moment said, you know, can you get in the hot air balloon and look down on your life? Yeah. get in the hot air balloon for a second and then do this.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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As a former partner of mine said, who I'm still on great terms with, no one likes to be shifted. Yeah, no one wants to be told what to do. Right, no one wants to be shifted. No one, no matter what state they're in, high or low, wants somebody to come along and try and shift them. Or just tell them like, you know, go for a walk. Okay, well, why am I, you know, like, to do what? Or meditate.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That one's become equally grating when it's probably a great thing to do, but perhaps there's a different way posed in the form of a question that would be more effective. I think the hot air balloon example also brings to mind something. I'll try and keep this as succinct as possible for your sake and for the audience sake.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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take all of our emotions seriously, nor should we react to all of our emotions with behaviors. And indeed, that is true.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But, you know, having studied stress a bit in my laboratory and experienced a lot of stress, as most people have in their lifetime, it's very clear that when we stress our mental aperture, our visual aperture, our auditory aperture, everything shrinks, right? It contracts. And we know that getting a different spatial perspective gives us a different temporal perspective.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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We can start thinking about our life binned in larger pieces and get that perspective of the things that in life or that are going well. There's a meditation that I guess it's a meditation, I don't know what to call it, that I started doing years ago when I was a junior professor because life was so stressful for tenure.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And little did I know that it just continues to be stressful, but a pleasure to do the work. That involves basically doing a standard type meditation for a few breaths of closing my eyes and focusing on my body and what's going on internally, but then opening my eyes and focusing on something external like my hand or the room, and then going to the pale blue dot It's a very wide aperture.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So effectively the hot air balloon looking down.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Distancing, right. And making this a practice, not in a moment of stress, but each morning as I start the day, as a kind of reminder that our brains, our cognition and our emotions go through tremendous state differentiation, like these complete, we're kind of different people under these different space-time references.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And that when we're in stress, we tend to get locked into one space-time reference. And I'm not trying to be cosmic about this, but the nature of stress is to have us anchor to the stressor.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And to put up mental walls to break out of that and physical walls. So it sounds like great supporters and we can help ourselves through the more unpleasant portions of the emotion scale if we want to by taking ourselves into this different perspective using spatial tools, hot air balloon, pale blue dot.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

6584.369

While a lot of the stereotypes dating back to the, you know, let's just say in 1930s through to the end of the 1970s seemed to couch people as more stoic, less emotionally expressive, especially in public or with people that they weren't very close with. There was also a tendency, at least in movies about that time, for people who were passionate to be rewarded for expressions of their passion.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

6611.425

So it's kind of two ends of the spectrum, right? We always think of the kind of the real stoic thing, both for male and female phenotypes, right? You look at movies from the 30s and 40s, you see that. But you also saw intense expression, passionate expression. And now I suppose we're in a bit of a new place where – I think there's an invitation.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

6638.707

I like to think there's an invitation for a broader range of emotional expressions and phenotypes, let's call them. I'm a biologist after all. It's also a safe word to use still, I think. You can use the word phenotypes. Stereotypes is a bit loaded, a lot loaded. But emotionality and the notion of people being overly emotional has a unfortunately a bit of a negative tinge to it.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Whereas somebody being passionate, that sounds like a pretty good thing.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Maybe that's why my graduate advisor said, instead of telling you to be careful, I'll tell you to be mindful because the opposite of mindful is mindless, and then you'll remember.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And yet we reward people still for being passionate, even if it's tinged with some anger. Like if somebody has a cause that they're really passionate about, we don't necessarily say they're being emotional. We say they're really passionate about this. There seems to be a subtle difference. There is.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

6745.275

That maybe it's rooted in a kind of a trajectory of like trying to achieve a specific outcome, whereas just anger or sadness kind of just, you know, um, geysering out of us is it doesn't seem like it's directed towards an end point. Right.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So given that we're both scientists interested in emotions, you're the expert. I'm also just the student today. I think it's worth pointing out to people that there isn't one location in the brain that governs this complex process that you just described. It's a network-wide phenomenon. But you did mention the body. You mentioned feeling. How is one feeling both in brain and body?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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People gaslighting each other.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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What's been lacking, however, and what Dr. Mark Brackett finally delivers to us is a roadmap to think about our emotions in a very structured way and thereby to engage with our emotions, sometimes shift our emotions, and certainly to understand the emotional expressions of others in ways that best serve our quality of life.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

6828.578

In your book, you include a number of really wonderful quotes, but one of them that I anchored to very quickly is the following. All learning has an emotional base. And it was none other than Plato that said that. What is the relationship between emotions and learning and decision-making?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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To what extent does somebody who has high emotional intelligence – have more or less body awareness or somatic awareness as opposed to somebody who's quote unquote in their head. Put differently, can somebody who's very much in their head who has very poor body awareness have high emotional intelligence?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

7284.39

Yeah, your examples bring me back to your earlier mention of this brilliant five-year-old kid who realized that his current emotional state was like the weather. It's going to change. In order to have that perspective, my guess is that he had to have already at some point moved from the blue quadrant.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

7311.105

So low energy, low pleasantness to the green quadrant, high pleasantness, low energy to the yellow quadrant, perhaps not in this order. And yes, I'm using this to remind people about the quadrants, higher energy, higher pleasantness, and then red, high energy, low pleasantness. Yes.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And you've developed an app that's freely available, um, that allows people to essentially, um, press the screen. Um, is that right? Yes. And to denote where they are on this, um, energy versus pleasantness, um, scale at numerous times throughout the day and night, if they choose, we'll provide a link to this app.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yeah. I've used it before and a previous version. I need to update and get the new version. And I will, um, I found it to be immensely useful just to start thinking about emotions along this energy versus pleasantness axis.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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After one does this for a few days or weeks, maybe checking in and touching the app, I don't know, a couple of times a day, maybe again in the evening upon waking, what sort of data or information does one get back that can be informative toward Being a healthier, happier person, excuse me, a healthier person, more contented, more content.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

7540.466

Yeah. Amen to that. When I did an episode about gratitude, um, now some years ago, um, I was positively shocked to see the data that the data on gratitude practices are so striking in terms of whether or not one looks at neurotransmitter expression or, uh, whether one looks at, um, Happiness rating scales, as it were. Learning, ability to learn.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

7566.372

So many things are improved by even short gratitude practices. And it was interesting for me to realize that not only do effective gratitude practices include thinking about what one has, but also in observing others expressing their own gratitude either towards us or towards others. So, you know, there's something about the human brain that really thrives on gratitude.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And the other thing that I think is worth mentioning, you said these students could, through a gratitude practice, realize the opportunity that they have. I think a lot of people default to the assumption that a gratitude practice will make them complacent and stop seeking to reach their goals. But actually the opposite is true.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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There's a smaller research as far as I understand, maybe it's expanded in recent years, where if people do a regular gratitude practice, even five minutes a day, their achievement actually increases as well. So gratitude and complacency are not on, they're not in the same bin.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

7633.092

So clearly you're on a mission and it's a wonderful, in fact, admirable one at that to bring more emotional awareness. Can we call it that? Emotional awareness to kids and to adults to better the world. I don't think I'm overreaching there. I think that's the goal. I'd like to get back to your origin story a bit. to understand a little bit more about the motivation behind the goal.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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You've written about in your book and you've spoken a little bit today about the fact that you were bullied pretty viciously. And also were the target of abuse. And when one thinks about bullying in particular, we, I think all hopefully naturally default to, okay, how can we stop bullies? But I'm guessing this is a two-sided issue. And I'm not trying to create empathy for bullies here.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But I'm guessing that in order to really disintegrate the bullying problem down to zero, which would be the ultimate goal.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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That we need to get into the minds of both the bullied and the bullies. Correct. And as uncomfortable as that might be, maybe this is an opportunity to embrace some of the very practices that you've been talking about. So if you would, could you tell us a little bit about how, as a kid, how you perceived your bullies? I'm very curious about that.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I can say I've never been bullied, but I've also not been a bully. I can easily say, I was thinking about this during our brief break there, I hate bullies. Like I like hate them. I'm like right there in the red, no pleasantness, like top, top corner there. Like it activates me physically. Like it makes me angry, makes me want to do something about it.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But as somebody who was bullied, how did you perceive your bullies? Did you think they were like... correct or the authority? And how have you embraced whatever understanding that was and morphed it over time to be able to think about how to solve the bullying problem, both from the perspective of the bullied and the bully?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Some years ago, I went to this course. It was, you know, broadly could be described as personal development. It was interesting. It was grounded in science and psychology. And each day would start with going around the circle as typically is done at these things. and you'd have to say how you feel, but you couldn't use a valuation. You couldn't say good or bad or so-so.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Yeah, that's part of the reason I asked the question. I mean, I was debating to myself whether or not I ask it in that way because I didn't want to come across as insensitive. No, I don't really care. Precisely because I have sat on neither side of the bullying equation that it's kind of a foreign thing to me. It also makes me realize, and especially now after what you just said,

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And I found it very difficult. I found it difficult for a number of reasons. First of all, I don't think I was ever trained to use specific language for my feelings. In fact, I don't think I was ever trained to understand what feelings were. In fact, I don't neuroscientists and psychologists are still trying to figure out what feelings and emotions really are. So a couple of questions.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

8080.936

that while I was in high school, I'm guessing there was a lot of bullying.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And I, I missed it.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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You know, I had some friends that could definitely be classified as misfits. Yeah. And I, I think looking back, they hung out with my group of friends because we were definitely – we were into different things. We weren't – me, meaning my peers, grew up in the John Hughes film era where you had like the jocks versus the hippies versus the skateboarders versus the – The burnouts. Yeah, exactly.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And I had my crowd and was friends with a number of people outside that crowd. But there were these kids that would hang around us that weren't into the same things that we were. And I am looking back and realizing now that they did it because they were definitely safe with us. And we could be a little scary if we wanted to be, but we weren't the type to go out and be scary.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So I think they must have sent some safety with us. And I actually have very fond memories of those kids and know some of them still now. So yeah, I asked that way in part because I realized I missed a lot. Well, Lord knows I missed a lot of what was going on in high school for other reasons, but I just missed a lot of this. And I think even in academic culture as an adult,

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Not now, but I certainly witnessed bullying at meetings that was more demonstrative, where people would make fun of people in general in a way that I felt suppressed the likelihood that people would ask questions, which is a kind of different form of posturing and bullying, right? It makes students afraid to raise their hand and ask questions at meetings, for instance.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

8181.485

Right, intimidation.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

8209.984

Even just working on humans is hard. For those of us that have worked on both animal models, which I no longer do, and humans, which I've done and do, working on humans is that much harder for all sorts of reasons. They're not on the same genetic background. You can't just put them in their cage, take them out, the same different like dark cycles. Some slept well, some didn't sleep well.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

8230.49

I mean, there are issues with animal work as well. But yeah, just even embracing human work research at all is an immense challenge. So the idea that it would be viewed as soft is, I mean, that's just like laughable to me, but.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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When it comes to using language to describe our emotions, how important do you feel it is to have a broad buffet of options? A previous guest on this podcast, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and I talked about this a bit, and she mentioned that in some cultures, there's very specific language for specific emotions. In fact, there's even a word to describe the

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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feeling of sadness one has in a particular culture after getting a really bad haircut, which is incredible when one thinks about it. We all know what that feels like. Right. We know what it feels like. Right. But there isn't, to my knowledge- We don't have the word. A word for that in the English language.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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So today's discussion centers very heavily on scientific data that plays out in the real world that we can all use. We talk about conflict resolution. We talk about how to think about and work with emotions. We talk about bullying, both in children and in adults, how to deal with that sort of thing effectively.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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your description of confronting this bully. I don't even want to call them your colleague because there's nothing collegial. I agree.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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But more importantly, the fact that you were able to confront them is to me. And I think to anybody that hears that story, the definition of courage, you know, because it's in the moments where we feel like this big and we're collapsed on ourselves and we don't

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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know where the resources are and we don't have somebody sitting there like holding our shoulder saying, listen, I'm going to go talk to them or let's go talk to them that you, you, you did that for yourself. You, um, internalize the, um, the lessons you'd learned initially from your uncle.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Um, and brought that forward. And, um, I think anyone hearing that story, um, it's, it's obvious to them that, um, that is the, a great act of courage. And it's an inspirational one too.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And a reminder that for people that are being bullied as adults as well, that it's important to calmly, but directly and firmly express, like you basically gave him a no, like a really strong, like, no, like you would to a puppy that was like putting itself in danger or something, except in this case, it's a human being who had agency. And so he needed a sharp, he needed to be punished slightly.

Huberman Lab

How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

872.27

I mean, I'm sure there's a curse word for it in the English language, but not necessarily for that specific feeling. Or unique to that specific feeling. So what is the relationship between language labels and emotion? And I ask that as a way to kind of wedge into the ruler approach, right?

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Well, certainly not rewarded. You're right. Punished isn't the right word. He certainly, whatever dopamine hit he got from that, that I think part of the intake was just needed that needed to be retracted. That needed to be taken away from him.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And it occurred to me just now that you're effectively doing what your uncle did for you, but for millions and millions of people.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Because as you pointed out, one recognizes, understands labels, but the label is central, literally, to the ruler approach. It is. It is.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Well, it's absolutely clear to me that you're extremely passionate about this mission of teaching people what emotions are and how to work with them, giving them really clear systems to do that, tools that they can do that.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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I think it's fair to say that you answered your own question, in my opinion, if I may, that, you know, you through your Uncle Marvin to you and through the work that you do and through your public education effort, which includes your graciousness and coming here and sharing with us. what you know, um, what you believe people can benefit from.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And I, it's absolutely clear to me that people can so benefit from these tools and what you put into your book, which does include some very personal things that, um, I must say are entirely couched toward the reader understanding and learning how they can make themselves and others and the world a better place. It's, um, it's really extraordinary.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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The, um, the rippling out effect, um, is not a sufficient way to describe it. It's really an enormous amplification of the hard work you've done. And I'm just really, really in awe of the fact that you've taken hard experiences and transmuted those into so much good. And so on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching, I just want to extend an enormous debt of gratitude.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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This is truly important work. And I don't say that lightly. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett. To learn more about his work and to find links to his book, Permission to Feel, which by the way I highly recommend, as well as other links to his laboratory and other resources, please see the links in the show note captions.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. Another terrific zero-cost way to support us is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media channels. So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the Huberman Lab podcast.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs, protocols that cover things like learning and neuroplasticity, how to optimize and regulate your dopamine, how to improve your sleep.

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide your email. And I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion all about emotions with dr mark brackett and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Matthew Hill. Dr. Matthew Hill is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the University of Calgary.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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One, do you think that there are different subjective effects of different strains of cannabis that can be attributed to the different strains, right? Not just to individual differences in experience. And then the second is, do you think that...

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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there will ever be a time in which we can understand this plant, flower, right, to the extent that we can engineer it to provide specific subjective experiences, perhaps more positive than negative, et cetera. And then there's a third question, but I'll hold off.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Is it possible that there's a chemical profile that relates to the most common indicas or most common sativas?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Well, then that immediately to me negates the sort of premise of this paper that I was referring to that divides according to indica sativa. And yet the paper is also trying to distinguish among all the different types or products of cannabis. Meaning, is there some other feature of the cannabis plant that does relate to these different subjective effects? Because people do seem to

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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get different subjective effects from different products that relate in some way to things other than the concentration of THC.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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You mentioned effects of cannabis on appetite. And I know one of the medical uses of cannabis is in people that are undergoing treatment for cancer in order to stimulate appetite, because oftentimes they have

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I mean- I see. So they purchase something that they think is going to make them calm and it makes them feel calm.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It speaks to, you know, I did an episode on the placebo effect. And a lot of people hear placebo effect and they go, okay, well, then everything's a placebo. The placebo effect is amazing. There's dose response to the placebo effect of nicotine on cognition. Dose response.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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If you're told you got a high dose when you actually got a low dose, you will exhibit the high dose neurocognitive enhancement effect. And by brain imaging, it shows a high dose-like enhancement of the relevant brain areas. In other words, the expectancy drives changes in brain activity.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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very low or even no appetite due to the cancer treatment um is the mechanism by which cannabis can stimulate appetite known and if so um what is the general trend of effect makes people hungrier obviously but we hear again in um kind of uh recreational terms of people getting the munchies you know becoming exceedingly hungry is that related to some cannabis induced effect on say blood sugar like insulin or glucose regulation or is it happening at a different level

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Do you think this also explains the – lore or perhaps it's real that different alcohols produce different drunks. Um, you know, I mean, I've heard of, you know, I've, I've got friends who will swear that whiskey makes them feel aggressive and vodka, you know, is mellow and white tequilas feel different than, uh, than the other tequilas.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And, you know, for people listening to this, they go, okay, well, that's not science. I agree. That's not science. That's just anecdote. And yet, um, You know, the chemical composition of these different drinks is different, but ultimately we're talking about alcohol, right? Different sugar contents, you know, different hangover propensity.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It's something for which we should all be very curious to try and understand what we know, what we don't know, and try and get to the real answers. So right off the bat on X, I invited Dr. Hill onto the podcast. and he accepted the invitation.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So I think it's important that you explain that because I do think that, like— Well, that's what the data pointed to. But now what I'm realizing is that anytime we're talking about cannabis, because of the 70-plus cannabinoids present that could modify— or join, so work in parallel with the effects of THC, we're really talking about polypharmacology. It's not a pure substance.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It's not like giving anandamide, or it's not like adjusting levels of endogenous anandamide. This raises, I think, an equally important issue for us to resolve, which is CBD, which we didn't talk about earlier. When Nolan Williams, who's a psychiatrist, He's one of these phenoms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Triple board certified psychiatry, neurology, colleague of mine from Stanford School of Medicine, who mainly works in Ibogaine and transcranial magnetic stimulation. But we talked about cannabis a bit when he was on the podcast. And he mentioned a strain of cannabis that is available in Colorado, which is pure CBD. I think it's called Charlotte's Web. And the parents of children who have epilepsy-

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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will move there or go there just to get this strain because it seems to help their epileptic seizures.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Yeah. So the questions are, could you tell us a little bit about the biology of the CBD receptor, mainly as it relates to CB1 or not? Does it bind CB1 as well? If not, how is it working? And you mentioned that people will not report any subjective effect of taking a pure CBD compound, so lacking THC, but it sounds like it may have some usefulness for treatment of epilepsy.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And what are some other established, meaning clinical trials and or lab data, to support the use of CBD for any type of either psychiatric condition, pain, et cetera?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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You mean there's no CBD in there?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Oh, CBD. I mean, given the availability of CBD everywhere, in gummies and drinks, and I mean, you can get it in a... convenience store.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I was under the impression that CBD also bound to the CB1 receptor. No, I mean, certainly not. Or that under some conditions, it can modulate the shape of the receptor to adjust THC binding. But now you're telling me that these two things rarely coexist together. So I guess the question- You can dose them.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I thought the explanation for that was that CBD can modify the CB1 receptor in some way that makes THC less able to engage with the THC receptor.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It doesn't sound like you're particularly convinced by that evidence. I'm looking at the look on your face for those listening. I'm looking at Matt, and I think he's being generous here. Let me ask it a little differently.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Does anyone know what CBD binds to?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11116.966

So that should make people feel more alert.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11124.32

I see.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11145.586

Caffeine. Of caffeine.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11147.567

The way you're describing this, it sounds like the anti-caffeine.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11253.639

Given the effects on adenosine that you described before, that it's sort of what we're calling, just for sake of discussion, the anti-caffeine adenosine. how do we explain the preponderance of CBD added to energy drinks that also contain caffeine? There's like no logic there.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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There you go. Everything can't be expectancy bias. I have a feeling it's going to be interesting to see in the comment section on YouTube. I mean, presumably there's some regular pot smokers listening to this. And the expectancy bias is so strong, as I allude to in the placebo episode and we've been talking about here. And yet it's so strong that I think

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Although cannabis users everywhere use that argument.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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people will also be convinced that there are real differences between different strains because they've maybe done the, you know, non-formal blind, you know, someone gave them their weed and someone else, and then they got a completely different effect, right? They're not expecting something different necessarily in a particular direction, but they get a very different effect.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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But that to me just speaks to the idea that Again, cannabis sounds like polypharmacology, 70 different cannabinoids, THC being among the more powerful components. But it's yoked in the sense that, as you said, people self-regulate their intake, provided they're smoking, not ingesting it by edible. And so it's almost like THC is being held constant.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And then there's this constellation of other things around it that are modified. And people eventually veer towards what they like, what they can afford, what works with their lifestyle. And then they come up with a bunch of theories based on packaging, what they're told, but presumably also some real effects of these terpenes, the CBD component, et cetera. It can't all be just psychological.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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knew they got placebo. People who got the drug knew they got the drug. It's very hard. You could do a dose response, but it's very difficult.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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This is a similar phenomenon with GLP-1. I and other people have pointed to the fact that certain food products or certain drinks or certain activities can increase GLP-1, glucagon-like peptide, which is now becoming more commonplace knowledge because of ozempic, monjaro, et cetera, as very powerful weight loss tools, although there's questions about muscle loss, et cetera. And then we had

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Dr. Zachary Knight on who explained that even a fourfold increase in GLP-1 brought about through a prescription drug or ingestion of a particular food or drink does not lead to any appreciable weight loss. However, when one achieves a thousand fold increases in GLP-1 through the use of things like Ozempic Manjaro, you see profound weight loss, meaning that you need enormous effects

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11504.542

in order to see the clinically relevant changes in that case of weight loss. So it sounds like a similar thing with CBD. So if somebody takes a CBD gummy and they feel that they sleep better, you would argue that that's entirely expectation bias.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I've never taken a CBD product. I know a few years ago they were all the rage. I just, I was never tempted to do it.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And I'm aware, and we'll talk about this a little bit more, that there is evidence, according to Matt Walker, who did a six episode series with us on sleep, that THC does help certain people fall asleep, but it can dramatically alter the architecture of sleep in ways that are probably not great.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11615.06

So if, for instance, you were to take a high dose of CBD and then maybe have a couple alcohol-containing drinks, that could be problematic, right? Because now you're talking about the two-hit model.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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This is more like... Separate enzyme pathway, but you're challenging the liver.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It's the steak and CBD or the CBD with omelet protocol. I'm just kidding, folks. I'm not suggesting that protocol.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So today's episode is really a unique one in that, first of all, we cover an enormous amount of biology and clinical data as it relates to cannabis, meaning today's discussion is not a debate. It is really an up-to-date discussion about how cannabis works. So we talk about THC versus CBD.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

11841.879

Yeah, I've never tried any of these CBD-containing products. I think a lot of what you're describing speaks to the fact that people are – eager for things that can help them adjust their anxiety and sleep better. You know, which is a large reason why a lot of this podcast is focused on respiration based tools and other base tools that can help people with anxiety.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I think that many people suffer from just too much activation in their autonomic nervous system. And I would argue there are much better things that are not of a ingestible type, you know, things that one can do that are science supported, right? There are clinical studies.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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meditation, breathwork, not so much breathwork, I would argue, but certain patterns of breathing, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy. There are a whole bunch of different things, as you know. So I don't know what explains the CBD craze, but you certainly have shed light on what is and mainly what is not known about CBD. And I think it's really important for people to hear.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Except supporting the placebo effect, perhaps.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I want to make sure before we close that we touch on some of the potential harms or asserted harms of THC, because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about this. We talked about psychosis and the lack of evidence for a direct causal effect. You give a beautiful description as to how we should think about all of that based on the current literature. But cannabis and driving...

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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is a potential hazard, right? And some people will laugh. They'll be like, oh, driving too slow as opposed to driving drunk or driving too fast. Okay, we can talk about that. We talked about the potential for addiction and the evidence potentially for and against that, right? There's also this, the big...

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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black or gray box of, you know, all the things we don't know about what regular cannabis use could do. And yet I know a lot of people who've used cannabis for years, mainly as a replacement for alcohol. At least that's how they describe it. Well, it's not as bad as alcohol that you hear that a lot. Okay.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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But what are some actual, if any, what are some actual harms of cannabis use that people need to take into account and just weigh against the fact that every compound, caffeine, even water can kill you if you drink too much of it. And then let's make sure that we touch on this issue of cannabis and driving or operating machinery.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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But I think the machine most people are thinking about these days is driving.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Because people are smoking less of it or there's just fewer carcinogens in there?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Can this potential, I want to highlight potential, relationship between cannabis use and cardiovascular issues be bypassed, no pun intended, by... using edibles, not inhalants, or is it related to THC itself?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And yeah, it took a while for the medical community to adopt the idea that cigarette smoking was bad.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Physicians would smoke in clinic. There are ashtrays in the doctor's office.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I mean, there's also- I'm chuckling at the example because you are so very clearly rooted in science, but that just came out of nowhere. Like, okay, cool. A hot shower, deliberate heat exposure, folks. There it is.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I have been trying to understand how this was- I'm not enjoying it because it's deliberate heat exposure, but it just speaks to the fact that we're talking about smoking being a regular part of the medical community's behaviors up until a few decades ago. And then a hot shower being the treatment for this chronic vomiting. And it speaks to the fact that with science and medicine, we do know a ton.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It's amazing how much we've progressed this, especially in the last hundred years. last 25 years even. But it's also astounding how these seemingly surprising antidotes to uncomfortable conditions can hold up over time in the absence of any randomized controlled trials or mechanistic data.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Is there something about activation of the heat?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And yet we started off today's conversation with you explaining beautifully how activation of these CB1 receptors are homeostatic in some sense, the thermostat analogy. And, you know, maybe after... chronic use. The seesaw gets flipped to one side and gets stuck there.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So a hot shower.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's always nice to end on a positive side. And we don't want to demonize cannabis, nor do we want to glorify it. But the examples that I've heard of medical uses for cannabis include appetite stimulation. We talked about that. For glaucoma, lowering eye pressure and glaucoma that

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Age and age-related increase in eye pressure are two of the major risk factors for glaucoma, which is the most common blinding disease second to cataract. More than 70 million people suffer from it. Everybody, regardless of age, get your eye pressures checked. There are drops for this, but okay, cannabis can reduce eye pressure and glaucoma. Nausea, you mentioned. And then anxiety.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It sounds like if people get the... the dose right and it's right for them, that in some cases it can help them with their anxiety. And the reason I raise that one is because it seems that most people who decide to use cannabis regularly are using it as perhaps for its euphoric effects, but as kind of a mild sedative, a way to relax in the same way that they would use a glass or two of wine.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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What are your thoughts on that? Because I think this is the most common use case.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And we know from the biopsychosocial model of pain that emotions and interpretation of the sensation of pain is a huge component of what people refer to as chronic and acute pain. Yeah.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So sort of a homeostatic scale and trying to maintain a middle range.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And that's probably why the CB1 receptor is so widely distributed is that neurons can excite or inhibit each other. That is, raise or reduce the amount of electrical activity in the let's say, nearby neuron, because we're talking about retrograde signaling. But ultimately, you don't want runaway excitation, because that looks like epilepsy.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And I think this is- Presumably because it's reducing the amount of rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which most people will probably hear and interpret as bad. But REM deprivation is actually one treatment for depression. So there are certain case conditions where dreaming and REM is not advantageous. And you're describing one.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And you don't want runaway inhibition, because that looks like suppression of ability to think, move, et cetera. Exactly.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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That's extremely interesting because it squares with my, again, non-laboratory observation that a lot of people use cannabis to deal with their anxiety.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Right. So what you're saying is that, you know, there's a range of kind of, let's just say, baseline circuit activation within the amygdala and related structures in mice and humans, presumably in other animals also.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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If people take a compound that adjusts the sort of homeostatic level of what's considered low, moderate, and high activation of those circuits that include the amygdala, then perhaps they're bringing their anxiety into range in a way that perhaps is different than with alcohol, which is more acute. People have a couple of drinks, they'll feel relaxed, but then...

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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There's this phenomenon of anxiety the next day, feeling a little anxious when they're not drinking. Whereas it's interesting that many people who use cannabis for this purpose are not using it all day long. They are perfectly able to wait until the nighttime or evening. And of course, people can wait for their happy hour for a drink as well.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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But it's far and away different than the way we envision something like alcohol use disorder, where somebody discovers that alcohol really helps with their anxiety, and then they're drinking you know, maybe one at lunch, maybe a couple at dinner, and then in the evening to fall asleep at night.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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I'm describing extremes here, but I find your hypothesis to square really well with the real world observations. And it's an interesting one.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Okay.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So perhaps genetic differences in sort of baseline levels of anxiety perhaps map to endogenous levels of anandamide and might predict propensity for THC use.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Fantastic. And I really appreciate that you're able to share some of what your laboratory is working directly on now and looking into the future. And I want to thank you for what has been an incredibly clear, precise, and in many cases actionable, whether or not it leads to a yes or a no. actionable information here because cannabis and CBD, as you pointed out, are kind of everywhere around us.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And people are making decisions about cannabis and CBD And I also want to thank you because what initially started off as a bit of a confrontation online, which I alluded to in the introduction that I gave, has now evolved into a collaboration that I'm certain based on the exquisitely clear and generous information that you've provided has led to success.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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better education, more clarity, and therefore better informed choices for all the people listening and watching. So I really, truly appreciate you coming out here, sitting down with me, discussing these issues, clarifying points that were unclear before, and also pointing to the fact that this is a complex system, a complex biology.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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You know, there are a lot of things about psychosis, about negative effects, about potential positive uses of cannabis that just are not yet clear. And thanks to excellent researchers like you are likely going to be clarified in the years to come. So thank you ever so much for your time, for your research, and for your attention to the public health education effort around cannabis.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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We address the question of whether or not indicas versus sativas have different biological and subjective effects or not. We of course talk about the potential correlation, maybe even causation, between cannabis use and psychosis. I think you'll find that discussion very interesting. And we talk about how cannabis relates to hunger, to memory, to anxiety, and to the treatment of anxiety.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Yeah, if somebody who is expert in a particular area takes issue with something specific and can substantiate it with something that can foster better understanding, without fail, I'll reach out to them. Now, how quickly we're able to get them here, et cetera, is always an issue. Sometimes we can put an addendum to a podcast. Nowadays, that's easier using –

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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what's called dynamic insertion, where we can go back and actually make a correction. But listen, the best situation is always when this podcast can mimic the real world of research science as you and I both know it to exist, where if we had been in a meeting and you presented data, I presented data and we disagreed,

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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what we would probably do would be to head, well, traditionally it would be to the bar, but we'd grab a cup of coffee or go for a walk and we would talk about it, hash it out, and then potentially bring it up again at the next meeting. So in some sense, what we've done here over the last month or so, and certainly during today's podcast is to do something to that effect. So-

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Yeah, likewise. And it's certainly within the spirit of the podcast. In no way, shape or form do I purport to get everything right and where I've made mistakes, I really strive to correct them. And listen, it's been a real honor and privilege to have you out here. Thanks for coming all the way from Canada.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And I do hope to have you back again as the research evolves and we can learn more about these topics and more. So thank you so much, Matt. Appreciate you. Great. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about cannabis with Dr. Matthew Hill. I hope you found the discussion to be as informative as I did.

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If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors that I mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media channels. So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter,

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief PDFs of one to three pages, where I spell out the specific do's and in some cases do nots, but mostly do's related to things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine levels. There's a protocol for neuroplasticity and learning.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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as well as protocols for fitness, which we call the foundational fitness protocol, includes everything, sets, reps, cardiovascular training. Again, all available, completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter and provide us your email. But I should point out, we do not share your email with anybody.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Matthew Hill. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Interesting. If I may, earlier you mentioned one of the potential psychoactive effects of cannabis is euphoria. Does that mean that the euphoria associated with cannabis use is independent of dopamine and is more reliant on something like? perhaps the opioid receptor system or the serotonergic receptor system?

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I'm certain that given the widespread use of cannabis nowadays, that you'll find the discussion to be both an informative and potentially useful one that could help guide decisions as to whether or not you or others should or should not use or avoid cannabis, as well as one that can simply inform about this very interesting compound.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And so- He discovered anandamide and decided to call it bliss because he had familiarity with cannabis or because he took anandamide as a direct experience. No, no, I mean- Because it takes a lot for a scientist to discover a molecule, but then for a scientist to discover a molecule and then name it bliss for a particular reason, you have to-

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Speculate that they had some familiarity with the compound.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Well, now that potential myth is definitely going to propagate.

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And of course, you'll learn a lot of neuroscience and biology along the way. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

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Your thermostat analogy is perfect here.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need to get sleep, both enough sleep and enough quality sleep.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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Very interesting. A lot of kind of aficionado questions about the receptor biology. I'll just spare everyone the details by just highlighting something that you already said far more eloquently than I will, which is I think it is fascinating that this whole system has both a tonic, like a steady release capability, and a phasic, you know, so the ability to spike

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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forgive the pun, the neuroscientists will know what I'm talking about, to spike more activity of the system superimposed on that tonic activity, because this is something that you see in the dopamine system. This is something that you see in essentially every neuromodulator neurotransmitter system. But it seems that the endocannabinoid system has accomplished this quite a bit differently.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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So very interesting, unique system in a number of ways that raise a number of key questions.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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And yeah, we just had an episode with Zach Knight from HHMI and UCSF. Uh, we talked about like the AGRP neurons and different neurons of the hypothalamus. We nowadays a rich understanding of the neurons that stimulate food-seeking, craving, and then eating.

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Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is that your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order for you to fall and stay deeply asleep. And to wake up feeling refreshed, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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His laboratory studies cannabis and its effects on stress, its effects on feeding, and its effects on the behavioral impacts of cannabis exposure at different stages of development. The origin of today's podcast episode is a bit unique. So I'd like to share a little bit of that background with you.

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One of the best ways to ensure all of that happens is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And with eight sleep, it's very easy to do that. You program the temperature that you want at the beginning, middle and the end of the night. And that's the temperature that you're going to sleep at. And it will track your sleep.

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Proof that even under the influence of cannabis, animals will work harder.

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It tells you how much slow wave sleep you're getting, how much rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, which is critical. And all of that also helps you dial in the exact parameters you need in order to get the best possible possible night's sleep for you. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

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As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

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There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

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Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.

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Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod4 Ultra. The Pod4 Ultra cover has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and the Pod4 cover has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop your snoring.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2585.1

Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2602.396

It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG-1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG-1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep, and more.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2623.148

So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG-1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of wellbeing related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2640.378

They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. You're talking about increasing endocannabinoid activity, and we've said all this in the context of cannabis. So maybe we could talk a little bit about how the components in cannabis, THC mainly, but also CBD, impact cannabis.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2663.214

these receptors, the CB1 and let's just leave CB2 out for the moment because it sounds like it's more of an immune system thing. But just to make it very clear, is there a way to increase the activity of endocannabinoids without ingesting THC?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2684.1

But you're talking about experimentally or recreationally adjusting their levels. But how does one do that without using THC?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2701.63

acting directly on the cannabinoid receptor, not... So it sort of mimics the anandamide and 2-AG.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2725.192

By the way, Matt's referring to the fact that I said that in a previous solo episode about this. And there I was nesting it in the concentrations of THC that can be found in high THC cannabis. Yeah. So essentially what I was saying is that at very high THC concentrations, the amount of

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2742.577

maybe not the binding affinity, but the amount of THC that is available to the CB1 receptors is going to exceed what's normally found in terms of the amount of anandamide that can bind to CB1 receptors, because what you're talking about is a super physiological condition.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

276.397

If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2782.962

So you said anandamide is high affinity, low efficacy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2790.988

But it is high affinity.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2807.925

Blocking the effects of 2-AG, but does it block the effects of anandamide?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2842.657

That's a very interesting point that we should highlight. So there are drugs that now exist that can block the breakdown of anandamide, make more available, presumably by disrupting some enzymatic breakdown, and therefore lead to more binding of anandamide. The now elevated levels of anandamide that are available to CB1 and you see no psychoactive effects.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2861.447

People are not aware that they... Yeah, you can do... No one can guess.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

2865.588

What is it used for?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

296.556

Elements is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration for proper brain and bodily function.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3109.979

Seems like a lot of gymnastics to basically confirm what they already knew. Yeah. which is that even greatly elevating the anandamide by blocking this enzymatic breakdown of anandamide leads to, at least from what I'm understanding, vastly different subjective experience than ingesting or smoking THC, which brings us back to THC.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

312.449

Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain to function at their best. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3131.173

And cannabis. It seems that this thing that we call cannabis and THC are – overlapping with the endogenous effects of anandamide. But here you're not talking about endogenous normal levels. You're talking about pharmacologically greatly increasing anandamide, no psychoactive effect, no euphoria, no munchies, et cetera. Then people smoke or take an edible of THC or cannabis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3158.471

and you get a vastly different set of effects. So maybe we could talk about THC and the CB1 receptor. And since we're here, we might as well talk about CBD and the, I think you're gonna tell us the lack of interaction with CB1 receptor, right? And what is cannabis doing at the level of these receptors?

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3177.981

Because it makes me wonder whether or not these receptors are the whole story or whether or not cannabis is, as you mentioned, 70 plus active molecules in there, terpenes and a bunch of other things that may modify their action. But this thing we call cannabis has many more actions than just mimicking the endogenous cannabinoid system.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3240.681

You're introducing the ligand, the thing that binds the receptor. This is far and away different than, say, like the actions of amphetamines, which are disrupting the normal biology in a way that's giving you an amplification of an endogenous mechanism.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3254.773

If that was all just nerd speak for those listening. It's one, in the context of amphetamines, what you're doing is you're taking an endogenous system, a naturally occurring system, and you're greatly amplifying the amount of dopamine, the amount of norepinephrine that's available. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3269.795

With what we're discussing today, the endocannabinoid system seems to be producing a set of effects that might overlap with the THC effects. But THC is doing a bunch of other things. And that's because THC, and we'll talk about CBD, but at least THC is acting as the ligand. It's in some sense, we don't want to say replacing, but it's masking the effects of anandamide.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

330.246

To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing, especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3356.319

That's very helpful. So the analogy that I was considering using coming in here, like the difference between endogenous testosterone or estrogen versus pharmacologic testosterone or estrogen given as a therapy is very different because that's a levels issue. This is a levels and an extent issue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

348.485

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3540.872

Super interesting. Well, I have to imagine that there are many people who use cannabis not to stimulate appetite but for other reasons. They either like the euphoria or to adjust their anxiety. Yeah. what are some other known mechanisms by which cannabis can change people's psychology? Let me focus in on one particular aspect of subjective experience, which is focus.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3567.236

Do you think that some people use cannabis because it allows them to focus better? And I raise this specifically because I think that in the past, cannabis has had a bit of a reputation for making people spacey. You use the word stoned, kind of out of it. And yet I've heard of some potential uses for enhancing focus.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3612.682

My understanding is that people who use cannabis have poorer certain forms of memory, but not necessarily poorer memory across the board. Is that correct?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

368.38

BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. There are essentially three things that make up great therapy. First of all, great therapy consists of having good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about the issues that you're dealing with.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3741.509

And so... I should just say this point has often been confused by undergraduates and others to assume that... Just because one can gain proficiency at a task while under the influence of a substance does not mean that you have higher proficiency at that particular task while under the influence. In fact, the way it was presented to me when I was an undergraduate was incorrect.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3764.044

I remember the lecturer said and later corrected himself. I won't call him out here because that's unfair. He's not here to defend himself, but it happens in lectures that – people who studied drunk would be better off coming to the exam drunk. That is not true from what I understand.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

382.826

Second of all, that therapist should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3853.166

Thanks for clarifying that. And also, thank you for clarifying the – discrepancy between endogenous cannabinoid binding and affinity for CB1 versus THC. I really appreciate that because that's something that you and I discussed in light of the solo episode I did about cannabis. And now you've made it clear that THC does not bind with much higher affinity. It's just, as I think your words were, it

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3877.079

assuming high THC levels in the cannabis carpet bombs all the networks as opposed to binding more with higher affinity at particular receptors.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

389.068

And third, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better understand not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also your relationship to yourself and to career goals and school goals, meaning excellent therapy should also inspire positive action.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3891.871

Is that right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

39.254

Previously, I did a solo episode of the Huberman Lab podcast about cannabis, the biology of cannabis, some of its medical applications and uses, as well as some of its potential harms. That episode came out several years ago now and remains a very popular episode. It's had millions of views and millions of listens.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3908.732

Yeah, let's talk about this because I know that you and I arrived at different understanding of the fastest, typical, and slowest routes of entry for cannabis. THC into the system to arrive at the brain, right? The numbers that I gave in the previous discussion about this were related to how quickly inhaled smoke moves from the lungs to the bloodstream and crosses the blood-brain barrier.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3935.685

Right, which is very fast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3943.389

Okay, so there may be... It may be that it is the same as nicotine. It may be that it's faster. But importantly, it can be fast. But typically, how fast is the onset of the subjective experience of, okay, somebody takes a hit off a joint or a bong hit, and they start to experience the subjective effects of euphoria, et cetera. How quickly after?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

3989.709

I've seen some people not titrate it very well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4011.04

Yeah. I mean, that's not just a fair amount. I mean, if we were talking about alcohol concentration- It's beer to vodka.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4021.082

And there are aquavit varieties, so to speak. By the way, I think when people hear me talk about any kind of drug that can be used recreationally or alcohol, I think some people assume that I'm ultra anti all these things. I'm actually not, right? I'm not an alcoholic, so I can- um, drink a little bit. And I have, I just don't tend to, and, um, we could discuss cannabis in a different venue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4043.371

Um, but the, uh, the point here is we're not trying to frame this as what people should or shouldn't do. We're just trying to inform people. I want to be very, very clear about that. So, um, but when I hear about, you know, um, 20 to 30% concentration, as opposed to 5% concentration, it's significant.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

405.018

BetterHelp makes it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you really resonate with and that can provide the benefits that I just described. Also, because BetterHelp therapy is done entirely online, It's very time efficient and it's easy to fit into a busy schedule because it involves no commuting to a therapist's office, finding a parking spot, or sitting in a waiting room.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

424.286

If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Matthew Hill. Dr. Matt Hill, welcome.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4270.656

I love this. I mean, as somebody whose lab has done an in-laboratory VR-based experiment on human anxiety and fear and then compared that to a clinical study that we did Sort of en masse, where people were at home doing specific respiration practices. You have many more subjects, but of course, they're reporting back their effects.

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Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4292.174

You can monitor them by device, look at HRV, look at heart rate, et cetera. I think having the ability to compare and contrast in laboratory and ex-laboratory data is extremely valuable.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4315.097

Yeah, for people that have never been to a laboratory or tried to find a parking spot at a university, that's an anxiety-inducing experience in and of itself.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

440.629

Delighted to have you here because you're an expert in the biology of cannabis, a topic that many, many people are curious about for a variety of reasons. So just to kick things off, maybe we can get people up to speed on what cannabis is. a little bit about how it works in the brain and body to produce the various effects that it produces and how some of that comes to be.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4516.576

So does that mean that cannabis use rarely leads to tolerance of cannabis use?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4539.038

Yeah, it sounds like those are precarious. Yeah. That somebody who thinks they have a lot of experience or, God forbid, no experience takes a concentrate and is, what, no longer getting the euphoric experience that they anticipated but instead are getting, what, a paranoid anxiety attack?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4583.588

This is a very important point, and I'm going to highlight it because I think it's very... Very, very important, although you're making it very clearly already, which is these days we hear a lot about the quote-unquote problems with high THC-containing cannabis as relative to what was present in the 70s and 80s and presumably 90s as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4603.766

I was a teen in the 90s, so maybe I'm alluding to something there. But what you're saying is that unless one is talking about concentrates, that people and animals in the laboratory will self-regulate the amount of intake in a way that leads to approximately the same blood levels of THC.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4623.18

So it may not be as much of a concern, at least in light of the concerns about, oh, these levels are so high that people are overwhelming their system with THC. Basically, this could be stated in real world terms as people are taking fewer tokes. of the higher concentration stuff that allowed them to match blood levels that were present in the person taking many more tokes in the 70s.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

465.135

And then we can dig into some of the nuance. I have a lot of questions about different types, if you will, of cannabis, the relationship to mental health, potentially to mental illness. We're going to drill into all of that. So just to kick things off, what is cannabis?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4798.589

Usually it's the life destruction that thwarts their progressive increase. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4805.634

Another form of life deterioration.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4845.467

Sorry, I have to interrupt pet positron emission tomography, not pets. Don't although people get their pets high and we don't know what those pets think about that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4854.892

If also high, one can assume a lot of things about what your pet is thinking while also high. Sort of half joke there. But yes, positron emission tomography is one way to assess the binding of drugs within the brain as well as activity of endogenous neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, such as anandamide, dopamine, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4944.135

It makes sense. Yeah, these concentrates sound like something to at least pay attention to as a potential problem. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4964.013

Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4974.223

Now, a major problem with a lot of blood tests out there is that you get information back about metabolic factors and hormones and lipids and so forth, but you don't know what to do with that information.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4984.272

With InsideTracker, they make it very easy to know what to do with those numbers because they have a personalized platform that allows you to see the levels of those metabolic factors, lipids, hormones, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

4994.161

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Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5011.612

InsideTracker membership offers significantly reduced prices on InsideTracker's comprehensive blood panels. Again, that's InsideTracker.com slash Huberman to get 10% off. Along the lines of use, tolerance, et cetera, Is cannabis addictive and or habit-forming? And I think it's probably important that we distinguish between the two.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5032.905

I may have made this joke in the previous episode I did on cannabis. I've known a lot of chronic cannabis users, and none of them – admit to being addicted. It's not my place to challenge them on that. But they do seem, in my experience, this is not an experiment, but in my experience, more irritable when they don't have access to what they call their quote unquote medicine.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5059.364

So that speaks to a dependence or something, but then we need to be careful because in the classic sense, addiction, I've defined and others in the field of addiction have defined it as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure such that it causes disruption to other areas of life and your life becomes Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5101.454

But that's the nomenclature now that people are using, alcohol use disorder, cannabis use disorder. This is what you start to see now instead of saying being addicted to pot or being addicted to alcohol.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5214.213

So I just want to make sure I'm understanding clearly. For people that use cannabis weekly, the... propensity for developing cannabis use disorder is on the order of about 30%.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5367.706

That's interesting. I was under the impression this has really changed over the last, you know, five, 10 years. You know, growing up, it was, I mean, I think there are still people in jail now because of possession and sale of cannabis. And then, of course, there are stores not far from here where people are selling cannabis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5496.671

Is... The legalization of cannabis leading to more cannabis users or fewer and or incidents of people going into the emergency room suffering from cannabis-induced psychosis, something that I hope we can also talk about.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5563.526

Does it split male-female?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

56.969

Several months ago, we posted a clip of that episode to X, formerly known as Twitter. And Dr. Matthew Hill responded to that clip on X with criticism about the specific points made within that clip. Most notably, my discussion of the data that cannabis use can in some individuals cause psychosis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5694.389

accidentally ate THC-containing gummies. Fortunately, the child was fine. But there are actually pretty serious ramifications for this. the parents actually are quite susceptible to legal action if this happens, right? So this is something to like really keep in mind.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5713.628

I mean, there are a million other health-related reasons why this is probably- Yeah, I don't know if that's true in Canada the same way, but in the States, yeah. Yeah, like if your kid gets into a stash of THC-containing gummies and ends up in the emergency room, there will also be, most likely, there'll be a police visit to that emergency room also, and it doesn't bode well for the parents.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5734.596

It's a very serious issue. And again, this was highlighted to me by someone that I know who didn't anticipate any of this, but kids are good at finding candy. And if that candy contains THC and they end up in the emergency room, serious issues. Nonetheless, if your kid is acting strange because you think they ingested THC containing anything, take them to the emergency room anyway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5783.678

I see.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5813.908

So as long as we're talking about edibles, Is there any fundamental difference between the dose regulation that you talked about earlier of inhalants versus, excuse me, versus edibles? Meaning earlier you said that even if it's high THC containing cannabis, people will self-regulate to achieve the same, approximately the same blood concentrations.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5834.656

But with edibles, I imagine you eat half a cookie, a quarter of a cookie, and you can end up in a vastly different place than you expected.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

5947.389

I've heard of this happening.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6078.106

Got it. As long as we're on the topic of time course, based on what I was able to find, I believed, and tell me if I was wrong, that cannabis can stay in one system for as long as 80 days. The reason I brought this up previously was there are a number of people who have used cannabis, are going to take a drug test, and want to know how fast it can clear from their system.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6102.645

But based on conversations we had offline, sounds like that 80 days might be a bit too long.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6127.45

So abstinence for 30 days.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6268.926

But you're talking about this metabolite that can come from the edibles that doesn't come from inhalants that can have a much more potent effect.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6278.531

So it's sort of a different situation altogether. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6344.183

Well, I guess it sounds like the drug tests either have to be revised or discarded. And it also sounds like if somebody is going to take a drug test for cannabis and they have used cannabis in any form in the previous 90 days, let's say, going for a run right before your test is going to liberate whatever THC resides in the fat stores.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6366.724

A lot of people are writing this down. Along the lines of what's known and not known, I'm curious what is known and not known about the effects of cannabis, THC, in particular on hormones. I've seen studies that cite increases in testosterone from cannabis use

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6386.636

I've seen studies that cite increases in estrogen from cannabis use, and they argue for increased aromatization of testosterone into estrogen as the mechanism. I've also seen studies that say the exact opposite. So is there any global takeaway message yet, or is it just highly variable or depends too much on dose and individual age, et cetera, that we just really can't say?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6417.522

Right. Well, there's, and this is where I think it's important that people understand that, you know, on this podcast, we cover science and studies, but we also pull from common experience that people want explained if we can.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6430.585

And one of the experiences that is talked about a lot in certain, let's just say online communities, is the experience of people who had no preexisting gynecomastia, male breast development.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6441.368

We'll smoke marijuana. Do we call it marijuana these days?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6447.034

I actually got a, I got someone, I got a lot of comments that said marijuana is an inappropriate term.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6452.6

Smoke, we'll go back to that. That was new to me. I didn't know. So forgive me if I didn't know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6458.686

Okay, so we'll smoke cannabis and experience gynecomastia, or in females, so males and females both have breast tissue, but in males it's typically, it's not hypertrophied, but they'll smoke cannabis and get gynecomastia, growth of the male breast tissue.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6475.637

That's sometimes reversible, sometimes not, presumably through the aromatization of testosterone into estrogen, which then acts on the tissue, makes it grow, as well as reports of breast tissue tenderness after cannabis use in females. So that was sort of the origin of that discussion around does cannabis impact aromatization of testosterone into estrogen?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6498.03

And you can find a little bit of evidence for that, but you can also find evidence to the contrary in the scientific literature. So I'm just curious your thoughts on this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6519.225

Interesting, because dopamine is one of the main ways that prolactin is suppressed. They're kind of in a seesaw. They work in somewhat seesaw fashion.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6564.022

Now, whether that's a preexisting thing— Is there any reason to think that would be the case?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6650.715

Yeah, it seems a bit, I mean, there are phytoestrogens in tons of different plants.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6654.877

The sort of attacks on soy and the attacks on – this I think grew out of the kind of the soy versus meat communities and plant-based versus carnivore. This podcast has always been agnostic with respect to nutrition and is really – if we encourage anything, it's that people consume – unprocessed and minimally processed foods as the bulk of their food intake.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6676.588

There seems to be enough data on that, but whether or not people choose to be vegan and eat a lot of plants or carnivore and eat just meat, we've essentially stepped out of that debate because let's just say it's as futile as about any other debate. It's completely circular. You end up right back in Twitter.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6713.046

So this seems to be something that purportedly occurs on a backdrop of elevated androgens, meaning in puberty, Or a backdrop of some other form of androgen increase.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6728.199

Yeah, but that's not the community I'm referring to. It seems that because transient gynecomastia during puberty is actually fairly common because of there's just so much androgen being produced in puberty that some gets aromatized. And that the idea, I'm not stating this as fact, is that it may exacerbate that. In any case, it sounds like the takeaway from this is that there –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6747.825

aren't a lot of conclusive studies about the effects of cannabis on testosterone or estrogen or aromatization in any direction.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6776.271

endocannabinoids.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6806.779

Are those positive or negative changes? I'm assuming that the studies you're referring to saw disrupted what they call sperm quality, which has to do with motility, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6828.176

So I have like- As we say this, I'm just chuckling to myself because anytime this conversation comes up about a substance and sperm quality or egg quality, I always get a barrage of comments of people telling me how many children they conceived while under the influence. No one is saying that you're going to be infertile.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6844.826

But if people are having challenges conceiving, it might be something to think about.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6884.215

Along those lines, I saw kind of a jaw-dropping statistic, and I'm not sure I still believe it, but you tell me what you know about this, which is that up to 15% of pregnant women in the U.S. have used cannabis during pregnancy. That just seems, that number just seems too high and yet, you know, it exists out there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

6916.915

Okay, two sounds like, okay, that I could imagine. but as high as 20. And do we know what the effects on the developing fetus are? There's a lot to unpack there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7031.419

Thalidomide effects are malformation of the limbs and other bodily structures in fetuses. It was an absolute tragedy of medicine that this occurred in even one birth. But Yeah, it's the reason why thalidomide is now, I believe, banned as a drug for use during pregnancy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7105.46

And this is... You're talking about the irresponsible that the dispensaries would say that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7109.042

Or irresponsible that the study was carried out that way? Because it's a little bit of... Entrapment?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7169.053

Bartenders in the US put in the comments on YouTube, do you have to undergo training about alcohol to be a bartender?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7256.215

You're certainly doing your part to provide the public education about cannabis now. So we all appreciate that. you're highly informed and broad distribution of this information. Because this is also an issue with psychedelics, which currently don't have legal status in the US. This is an ongoing process of whether or not it will.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7273.427

Right now, things are really on the teeter-totter with MDMA, where we await the decision from the FDA, but the early recommendation to the FDA was to not approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. So today, in mid to late June 2024, we'll see what happens.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7289.83

But this is also the case for ketamine, which has legal status, but many people are accessing ketamine not through a physician, but through online sources. So what you're speaking to here is a much larger issue. And I absolutely agree with you.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

729.581

Fascinating plant. You mentioned the psychoactive effects. Some people listening to this and watching this presumably have experienced those psychoactive effects, others perhaps have not. How could we describe for both groups, what the quote unquote psychoactive effects are. You mentioned the higher the concentration of THC, the quote unquote higher someone will get, right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7304.935

I mean, I think most people are probably not aware, except by experience, positive or negative in some cases, about the differences in blood concentration as it relates to number of tokes versus concentration versus edible. I mean, these are critical themes, especially for where we're going to go next, which is, you know, all the discussion about high THC and psychosis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7369.973

It sounds like the take-home message is proceed with caution, you know, low and slow.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7376.819

Like don't ingest too much too quickly. Like really, you know, if one is going to explore this legally, of course, you know, take a little bit, wait, take a little bit, wait, because otherwise you're going to get the, who was the reporter? Oh. I think it was Maureen Dowd, but I don't know.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7396.877

Reporting from the floor in Colorado.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7457.14

Can people self-regulate their THC concentration in the blood by vaping as well as they can by joint or bong or other form of smoking?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7495.088

Yeah, the big bag.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

755.422

The greater the intensity of the high. What is the high? And I know people are probably chuckling saying, you know, does Huberman not know because he's never done it? I mean, that's my own business. I just want people to understand what you mean by psychoactive effects.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7598.947

What? And if you go overseas, it's even more wild. I mean.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

76.758

He also took issue with some of the specific points I made in that clip related to potential differences in the biology of the effects of different strains of cannabis, most notably indica versus sativa strains, and a few other points as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7614.912

You know, we're going to be doing episodes on stem cells. And, you know, you've got people flying out of country to do stem cell injections. People are getting them down in Florida who went blind from the injections of stem cells into the eye in an attempt to save what little vision they already had. Probably don't want to get me started on that one. I'm in total agreement with you, by the way.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7632.579

I want to make sure that I ask about psychosis and paranoia. Yeah. I've previously said, and I was sort of, I wasn't joking, but I have observed in my history that when people started to experience some degree of anxiety or paranoia when smoking alcohol, cannabis, that sometimes the message they would receive back is to take more, to just adjust the subjective experience.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7662.736

I think that's a terrible idea. Terrible idea.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7675.446

Well, usually the advice of people in terms of that was recreational drug taking is, um, is rarely excellent advice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7695.548

Yeah. Um, I also am aware that there are some very high profile papers that have been published in the last really five years or so pointing to potential increased risk for psychosis of lasting duration, even after the effects of cannabis have worn off in high THC cannabis users, in particular alcoholics.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7718.487

high THC cannabis users that initiate that cannabis use young, and this might be preferentially impacting males. I want to make clear that what I just said is not a statement of absolute fact. It's my understanding of the conclusions of these papers.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7734.638

There are other conclusions in these papers also, but that particular conclusion seems to be important enough that they place it in the abstract and it's reached major press headlines. So I guess the simple question, which probably doesn't have a simple answer, is does THC cause psychosis?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7789.448

What about anxiety attack?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7797.934

Or does it carry the same set and setting considerations that, you know, psychedelics like psilocybin-

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7903.72

Okay, so to just clarify for people, these are laboratory mice that are genetically modified so that they contain or lack specific receptors on particular neuron types so that researchers can parse the effects of THC on what we're referring to as inhibitory neurons, which quiet other neurons, versus excitatory neurons, which excite. other neurons and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7926.861

And in doing so to understand some of the network biology, which is basically impossible to do in a typical mouse, what's called a wild type mouse or a human, because when one ingests the drug or when the mouse is given the drug, it affects any site in the brain, potentially any site in the brain where the CB1 receptor is expressed.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

7954.777

You want to see that result.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8171.339

Like- is in the scanner and then starts having a psychotic episode. But chances are they're going to try and get out. For those that don't know, I don't want to scare people out of doing MRI or fMRI, but you're typically... told to stay extremely still. There's sometimes even a bite bar.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8190.925

This is a very controlled environment, not an environment that you would want to be in during a psychotic episode.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8229.751

And there's also the issue of polypharmacology, which is simply when people take one drug, then there's often the tendency to take another drug either because it's available in those or because their threshold to saying yes is a little bit lower. Do most people who take cannabis and achieve the high have a tendency to do other drugs?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

823.989

Possibility everywhere.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8249.551

It doesn't seem like a drug that people combine with a lot of other drugs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8381.43

Is there a bias towards males developing psychosis? I know there may be a bias initially toward males in schizophrenia that could confound this, so we want to be careful.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8457.279

What about a first relative who has schizophrenia? Because there's a strong genetic component to schizophrenia.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8523.845

Yeah, I was, um, looking toward, um, some of the recent studies and, uh, Lancet, JAMA Psychiatry, I believe we can provide links to these again. And now more recently, there's been a lot of, let's just call it mainstream media coverage of this potential, I think is the right way to refer to it, potential linkage between

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8544.867

adolescent, teen, and young adult use of high THC cannabis and lasting psychosis. But the more I hear you talk about this, the more I'm wondering if that idea is being amplified more than perhaps we ought to let it be amplified.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8626.895

As I recall, and I may have this incorrectly, but as I recall from my undergraduate years... What you just said is also true for military service, for people that have a predisposition to develop schizophrenia, that active military duty can exacerbate it as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8822.811

Yeah, I hear your point loud and clear. I seem to recall that there is a higher incidence of schizophrenia independent of cannabis use closer to the poles and less so at the equator. I don't know if those statistics still hold up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8840.505

It would be interesting for us to look into that because then it would argue that since we're comparing very northern locations to less northern locations that perhaps cannabis was You know, sort of exacerbating that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8861.878

What is it about North Americans and cannabis use?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8871.401

I like The Grateful Dead. Rick Rubin convinced me to start listening to them again. And because my sister used to listen to them and there's some great songs and they're from Menlo Park, Palo Alto. So I've done my duty to listen. There's some great songs. So I'm not picking on them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

889.88

That's interesting. Is that true even if they've never used cannabis before?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

89.944

Now, as somebody who's been in the field of science for several decades now, I'm very familiar with the fact that every field, every single field within science has debates within it, controversies, and sometimes outright battles. And to me, that's part of what makes science interesting. It's an evolving process.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8906.975

Do you see differences between United States and Canada with respect to either cannabis or opioid use?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

8952.695

And so I mean- It's a stressor argument.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

905.611

And they pay you, so now pot smokers everywhere are running to look at stuff.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9054.687

I've spoken to many psychiatrists in an effort to find someone expert in ADHD. We've done two episodes on ADHD, focusing on everything from behavioral to nutritional, but also prescription drug treatments for ADHD. And what's interesting is that all of them have relayed the fact that many people, not just

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9074.525

young people, but adults with ADHD will often use, not necessarily abuse, but will use stimulants like coffee and other forms of stimulants to a high degree. And then of course you can say, well, perhaps the stimulants are causing ADHD, but they actually argue for the opposite, which is that people are attempting to self-medicate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9093.569

And then it's perhaps no surprise that most, not all, but most of the medications that are approved for the treatment of ADHD are variants of amphetamine or similar.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9103.632

So it's another case where, you know, depending on whether or not you look through the lens of the drug leading to the condition or the condition leading or through the lens of the condition leading to the use of the drug, you can end up in two very different places. But it looks exactly the same through each lens, so to speak.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9272.358

No, the way you're explaining it now makes perfect sense. I do want to make sure that we distinguish between schizophrenia, like psychosis, or schizophrenia itself induced by cannabis, and manic bipolar episodes. So people who have a predisposition or full-blown manic bipolar, sometimes called manic depression, but there's still a lot of nuance there. We did an episode about this that people can

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9297.876

also find linked in the show note captions but in any case is there any evidence for the fact that people who suffer from or have a predisposition to manic bipolar conditions like bipolar depression for instance should avoid high THC cannabis um so well first of all I mean

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

931.23

What about the effects of cannabis on time perception? There's this reputation that cannabis has for disrupting time perception that people will think a long period of time has passed when in fact very little time has passed. Maybe it's sometimes even the reverse. Is the mechanism by which cannabis can adjust time perception known?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9530.248

Or maybe they seek out lots of different forms of recreational drugs and cannabis just happens to be one that they land on, which raises the other question, which is, It's hard to imagine that these people who develop psychosis who happen to be using cannabis are only using cannabis.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9558.352

Which is known to stimulate dopaminergic and other pathways.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9585.155

I think it enhances cognition in everybody. It just carries certain health concerns. And by the way, it doesn't enhance all forms of cognition, but there is a nice body of work to support the idea that nicotine

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9597.378

delivered in any number of different forms can improve cognitive function to some extent but i don't suggest people run out and do it and in fact it's um one of the more um quickly uh uh abused drugs nowadays because of the non-smoking delivery routes that are becoming really popular pouches and yeah and things in fact i was chewing a little bit of nicorette gum to kind of do an experiment i liked it a lot and then um i decided to stop completely recently because it just um

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9625.566

it wasn't having the same effect and I found myself reaching for more and that's the time when I usually back out.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9838.936

I think it's because of these very high profile papers and the way those were picked up by traditional media. And this seems to be something that every couple of years there's a resurgence of this idea. Clearly people are curious about it. And so I just want to say thank you for clarifying what is now to me obvious that It could be that there's a relationship there. It's clearly not the case yet.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9864.898

And it may never be the case that there's a causal relationship there. And it could just as well be that people who have a predisposition to schizophrenia are seeking out cannabis use and engaging in cannabis use. And I think that's a very important principle for our listeners and viewers to just hear and understand anytime we're talking about a substance and a condition.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9914.302

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about strains of cannabis. I've spoken before about the sativa versus the indica strains, and certainly there is a lot, a lot, a lot of – subjective anecdotal descriptions about differences in the quote unquote effects of those as reported by users.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9937.3

When I talked about this before in the cannabis episode, I leaned on a paper that took those subjective reports of arguably many, many people push those subjective reports through what was known about the strains they claim to have used. So this is, you know, people are reporting their use.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9954.431

We assume honestly, but you always have to assume that there, I guess people could be lying about which strains or misinformed, but, and then using machine learning to couple their, their, subjective experiences as they report them to indica versus sativa strains.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9970.73

And then by looking at the chemical composition of those different products, because these were products that they had consumed, trying to tap chemical composition to strain, in this case, mainly the indica sativa discrepancy to subjective experience. And I know that you and presumably others in the field of cannabis research, take real issue to that sort of approach.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Matthew Hill: How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks

9995.688

And perhaps I have the feeling this is what you're going to say, rest on the idea that we, at least at this point in time, really can't say anything about the different biological effects of sativas versus indicas. And yet at the beginning of the episode, you said that there are many, many different cannabinoid compounds in cannabis. So... Three questions, and I'll keep these very short.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

0.41

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Craig Conover. Dr. Craig Conover is a medical doctor who did his training at Brown University and Thomas Jefferson University.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

101.718

Then we discussed the use of peptides specifically to increase growth hormone secretion during sleep as well as some peptides that can actually increase rapid eye movement sleep dramatically. Today, we also discuss testosterone therapies, not just for men, but for women. These are growing increasingly popular, as well as things like NAD, as well as specific supplements.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1047.317

Is that a direct effect of Ozempic on... the immune system and pathways related to inflammation, or is it indirect through the loss of adipose tissue, body fat, which then lowers inflammation?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1121.502

Very interesting. Well, I suppose moving from most widely known, peptides are still fairly unknown to most people, even the concept, but that's why you're here. You're changing that right now. But moving from things like GLP-1 to what I would probably call the second most popular peptide, the one that we're hearing more and more about all the time, and that's BPC-157, body protection compound 157.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1149.518

Yeah. which, to my understanding, there are a lot of animal data, very few, if any, clinical studies on humans. Agreed. But a lot of people now taking BPC in various forms. Yeah. What are some known uses for BPC? Let's just say within your clinic. Sure. And then we'll get around to the fact that BPC has, let's hope, temporarily been taken off market. Yep. And what some of the alternatives are.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1179.119

But... What is BPC? What instances or people have you found it useful for?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

122.345

Dr. Conover, as he will soon tell you, is not a huge proponent of supplements, but he does mention several that he feels are of particular use, including things like coenzyme Q10 and some of the methylated B vitamins, and he explains why he takes that stance. So today's discussion is really for anybody interested in mental health, physical health, and performance.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1301.32

That's interesting because my understanding is also that BPC, part of the specific and general adaptation of exercise is triggered by inflammation.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1310.585

This is why indeed it is true that doing ice bath or really cold water immersion, cold shower seems fine, but cold water immersion in the four to eight hours after resistance training can limit some of the hypertrophy and strength gains from resistance training because what you're inducing when you actually go into the gym that leads to the hypertrophy and strength training is an inflammation response that triggers the compensation.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1334.856

or the hypercompensation. So it's interesting, you're saying that BPC By the way, I must say this because then forgive the editorial, but that is not to say that cold plunges and cold immersion is bad. It's just in the hours following resistance training, specifically for hypertrophy and strength training. If those are your goals, probably best to do it outside of that window.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1355.887

Other times it has some tremendous benefits. Be safe, but there. Okay, back to the topic, and forgive me, but this can set off a complicated... storm of sorts, if I'm not ultra clear about the details. BPC-157, strongly anti-inflammatory.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1374.398

My understanding is it also may upregulate growth hormone receptors.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1407.264

Got it. Yeah. BPC-157 comes in many different forms, or it used to when it was FDA not disallowed. Sure. So I could imagine how the oral forms would allow for a... just general anti-inflammatory response. It's a gut peptide. So we don't have to worry about it being destroyed by the gut. Most peptides that go into the gut are broken down.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

141.035

And the reason I say that is that even if you aren't considering taking peptides or already taking peptides, peptides and some of these other compounds I've mentioned sit somewhere between doing nothing except diet and exercise which I sort of see as the next step up the ladder in terms of augmenting your health approaches.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1432.295

But this peptide, when it's naturally occurring, occurs in the gut. So it survives in the gut. So if somebody is taking BPC-157 orally through a capsule or tablet form, My guess is that has a general anti-inflammation response.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1522.352

How do you think that's working? And my understanding is BPC-157 can initiate fibroblast migration, some of the cells that make up the various connective tissues that when injured or sore, other things can make us injured or sore, of course, but when injured or sore, that those need repair.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1539.65

So it always was perplexing to me why one could put BPC-157 in such a small volume under the skin, just a few centimeters off the belly button, and it would somehow...

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1553.47

seek out the the injury site in an elbow or an achilles and there are all these wild anecdotal tales of you know lore of let's just say uh there was this olympic athlete not this last olympics but the previous summer olympics that had a torn achilles who came back a few weeks later and everyone was and meddled people were talking about you know took podium um

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1573.846

That is – and people were talking about BPC-157. There was kind of this – and who knows? That's just shatter and fog, as they say. But kind of wild, the idea that you could just inject something systemically, put it into the systemic circulation, into the bloodstream, and it would – ferret out the location in which the injury took place and initiate a recovery response.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

160.655

And then of course, there are a number of prescription drugs, including hormone therapies, such as growth hormone therapies, testosterone therapies, and a number of other things that yes, can modify those hormone pathways. They are in fact hormones, but they actually can shut down one's natural production of those hormone pathways.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1654.861

one has ever gone into the hospital for a surgery and got a cold saline infusion. You realize how quickly it hits your toes. You know, they're putting it in at your elbow. It's almost instantaneous. Yeah, within a few seconds. It also makes one appreciate how we're all generally a little bit dehydrated.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1670.095

When you start getting a real proper saline infusion, all of a sudden you feel yourself come to life in a way that, oh, this is what it feels like to have just the right amount of salt in my bloodstream. Exactly.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1722.813

BPC is definitely, shorthand for BPC-157 that is, is certainly in widespread use. I have been concerned, just personally, about gray market sources that contain contaminants and the fact that many people are obtaining BPC-157 not from a physician, not from a compounded pharmacy. but just kind of on, quote unquote, on the internet. Sure. You're a physician.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1749.96

I'm guessing that until the recent ban by the FDA, you were able to prescribe clean BPC as it were. Yeah. What's the story with BPC now? And maybe we could talk about gray market versus- I think it's a great question. Versus prescribed and made it a compounding pharmacy versus pharmaceutical company, pharmaceutical. And then of course there's black market, but let's just leave that out.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1774.933

There are people that are going to tell you, hey, this is BPC and sell it to you. That's obviously bad and dangerous.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

178.499

Peptide therapy sits somewhere between doing nothing and supplementation and those more advanced hormone therapies. And that's why peptide therapies, I believe, are growing in popularity. They can augment specific hormone pathways. They can augment specific, in fact, multiple processes within the brain and body to augment health.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1805.133

So as long as we're here, my understanding is decadarabalin and testosterone cypionate can be prescribed, or testosterone enanthate, things like that, by physicians. That's because it's been FDA approved for the treatment of various things, hypokinatal syndromes, testosterone replacement therapy in both men and women, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1823.604

So those categories of testosterone-like compounds, cypionate, enanthate, et cetera, and Decadrobilin, which is basically like, is it similar to DHT? Is it?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1906.502

No, it's interesting. And I think another sort of brief editorial from me, if I may, is, You mentioned this patient was in their 80s. I think nowadays, unfortunately, a lot of younger males in particular, guys in their, gosh, even teens, but 20s and 30s, even early 40s, think that they need to look to synthetic testosterone in order to look a certain way, perform a certain way.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1932.552

in the gym, libido, etc. And I'll go on record again, and again, and again, saying that it's absolutely not necessary for most people of those ages, provided that they are taking good care to sleep well, eat well, take care now, but I realized that there are a growing number of use cases where People, for whatever reason, aren't able to recover from exercise. They're struggling.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

1955.643

This is a little bit like the Ozempic conversation, right, where there are things that can help move the needle in the right direction, pun intended. But here with testosterone, synthetic testosterone and DECA, there's a real concern about loss of fertility.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

196.358

but they don't tend to operate in that negative feedback cycle by shutting down one's own endogenous production. Now that doesn't mean that they aren't without some safety concerns.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

205.744

And today we of course discuss the potential side effects and safety concerns of peptides, as well as the critical issue of sourcing clean peptides and working with a board certified physician if one is going to pursue peptide use. So by the end of today's discussion, you will be right there on the cutting edge of what's happening and where things are going with peptides.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2087.736

Right. Well, what brought us on to the conversation about testosterone was this black market issue. There's also what I would call this dark gray market issue, which is that there are a number of companies that will sell all sorts of things, but peptides in particular, and listed on their website, it'll say not for human or animal consumption, for research purposes only.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2108.94

And one of the major issues is that the potency and cleanliness, so to speak, of purity of those compounds is not established. Many of them have LPS, lipopolysaccharide in them, which is inflammatory.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2125.95

Earlier, before we started recording, you mentioned that you have heard of or interacted with, not your patients, but people who have come to you saying that they had really serious life-threatening consequences for using these black market, certainly, but dark gray market peptides.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

225.036

And in keeping with that, you'll notice that during today's discussion, we talk a fair amount about what the FDA currently allows in terms of prescription peptides, what the FDA has recently removed from the market in terms of peptides. And as a very recent update, just prior to the release of this episode, I learned that three peptides, CJC1295,

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2274.165

So semirelin to stimulate growth hormone release, offset some of the muscle loss from terapazide.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2300.916

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2321.813

In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2341.051

And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2356.023

I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2375.033

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2390.959

So is it fair to say that if one is interested in exploring the use of peptides for what you refer to as performance medicine, mental, physical health, and performance falls underneath that? Yes. essentially only put peptides into their body, maybe even on their body surface that they're obtaining from a physician who's obtained the peptides from a compounding pharmacy.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

24.451

He is a world expert in what he refers to as performance medicine, which involves the use of peptides and other therapies for improving mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, many of you have perhaps heard of peptide therapies. Perhaps some of you have not. A peptide is simply a small protein. So insulin is a peptide.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2464.512

Yeah, I agree. And it worries me very much that people are buying PPC from dark gray market or black market sources. I mean, anything that says on it, not for animal or human use, for research purposes only, you can pretty much... guarantee the endotoxin, the lipopolysaccharide, at least has not been removed.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

247.272

both of which are in the growth hormone secretagogue family, meaning they promote the release of growth hormone, as well as thymus and beta alpha, which is in the sort of anti-inflammatory and tissue repair pathway. Those three are now re-allowed for prescription in the United States. So at the time of recording this episode, we discussed some of those as being recently banned by the FDA.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2486.453

And that can be really problematic, especially since my understanding is that it can be cumulative over time. It's not that one injection causes somebody to go into anaphylactic shock. It's that some of this LPS can build up an inflammatory response over time. And then you don't know where the tipping point is. And then somebody can have a really terrible reaction.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2579.992

So given that BPC 157 has been effectively removed from the legitimate market, what are people's alternatives? Again, working with the caveat that People should work with a physician.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2597.021

Where can physicians get something similar enough to BPC-157?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

268.964

They are now approved again for use in humans by the FDA. So there's a brief and very recent update. So just to summarize this admittedly long introduction, today you're going to learn about this incredible area of science called peptide biology and how it can augment mental health, physical health, and performance. And you're going to do so from one of the world's leading clinical experts.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2684.637

I definitely want to circle back as to what the motivation was by the FDA for doing that at some point. I think in the meantime, however, I think there's a lot of interest in BPC-157, a lot of use of BPC-157. The sources of BPC-157 are now drying up. And That's why I'm personally concerned that people are going to start going to the dark gray market and black market.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2709.894

I'm excited about the pentadecarginate. Yes. So let's put that on people's ear map, brain map. Pentadecarginate may be a good physician-prescribed substitution for people that can benefit from BPC-157.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2744.053

And thus far, you haven't mentioned any side effects of BPC-157 or pentadecarginate. That's kind of remarkable. It's been tremendous.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2794.949

And even though earlier we were talking a little bit about some hormone replacement therapies, before that, off microphone, you mentioned that you prefer peptides to direct hormone manipulations in most cases. So I think while peptides can be hormones, there are things like – oxytocin is sometimes called a peptide hormone.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2818.331

In general, when people think about hormone therapies, they're thinking testosterone, estrogen, pregnenolone, thyroid, et cetera. It sounds to me like much of your practice is built up around the notion that there are things that one can use, peptides, to kind of push and pull on these various systems without getting into them directly.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2838.917

My understanding is the advantage of that is you don't get the negative feedback. You don't gain the shutting down of natural production.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

292.663

Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Juve.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

2952.819

So I've long wondered whether or not the The tale I was told when I was growing up, which is that every hour before midnight is worth two hours of sleep post-midnight. That feels true to me. Then again, feels true is often misleading, but feels true to me. But it makes perfect sense if the largest pulse and growth hormone is occurring in that couple of hours before midnight.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3036.261

Yeah, using side effects as an indicator of whether or not something's working just seems like a terrible idea. But it's very common.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3046.419

I tend to be very conservative about these things. And by the way, I've tried various peptides for short periods of time because I like to experiment very safely. And some things like sermorelin, and we'll talk about other growth hormones, secretagogues, for me, for whatever reason, gave me great sleep, but only in the first part of the night.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3067.01

It nuked my rapid eye movement sleep in the second half of the night. It spiked my prostate specific antigen. It was a very consistent effect. I came off it and it went back down. That went back on, it went back up. And so I just found I couldn't take it. And it didn't take me very long to figure that out.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3081.414

But I know that there are some people who love sermorelin and don't see any of the same issues. So it seems like it can be very individual.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

311.003

Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3189.488

I think for most of our audience, the interest in growth hormone secretagogues probably relates to the better sleep and the overall feelings of vitality. And probably most people are seeking to...

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3201.117

not spike their appetite or put on muscle really these days we're hearing more and more from people both men and women who want to be strong without being big yeah and they prefer to be lean as opposed to not lean which i think is a great goal frankly that's my goal at this stage of life i just turned 49 yesterday and i happy birthday oh thank you thank you yeah thanks for coming out to the the birthday oh yeah that was a lot of mini bash the other day it was a lot of fun um

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

321.192

Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3227.301

You know, I want to be strong and capable. I also want to be able to run and have cardiovascular fitness, but I don't want to be large. I don't want to take up a lot of space. I'm not interested in taking up a lot of space. And I think most people fall into that category.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3241.095

So if GHRP-6 can spike appetite, which for a subset of people might be useful, but probably most people will want to avoid it. ipamorelin, I've always been calling it ipamorelin, but ipamorelin at 100 micrograms dosage or less per night sounds like it's an interesting tool. What are some of the other growth hormone secretagogues? And I should just brief, I'll take the liberty of defining it.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3263.308

These are peptides that stimulate the release of your own endogenous growth hormone. This is not taking growth hormone. Right.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3306.795

The growth hormone releasing hormone. Correct. Yeah. But we can almost set aside CJC now because CJC-1295.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3313.778

The FDA just came in and let's just say one acronym took out another. There you go. The FDA took out CJC.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3320.66

And BPC. And BPC. People are probably getting a little dizzy with these acronyms, but I think we're doing a good job of guiding people along. So Sermorelin and Tesamorelin are similar enough.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3359.555

Or does it lead to this feeling of enhanced sleep as well?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

339.847

What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellar adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3393.21

And this is taken before sleep, no food within 45 minutes of the injection.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3456.63

Trevor Burrus, Jr. : Got it. And if one is combining tesamorelin or sermorelin, ipamorelin and well, not BPC anymore, but pentadeca arginate instead because you can't get BPC-157 compounded. Is that done every night, five days a week, three days a week? What's the rationale of this five days on, two days off?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3525.68

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3534.648

While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3552.583

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Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3572.921

Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3595.091

Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

360.791

If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3602.776

I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3620.888

Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3639.673

Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3654.65

because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3666.353

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Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3681.278

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Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3699.688

Go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 8sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman. Before we started recording, you mentioned that you're actually not a...

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3718.285

I'm a huge fan of taking massive amounts of supplements that you are a big fan of taking CoQ10, coenzyme Q10, 200 milligrams per day in the morning. I also take CoQ10. I think I started taking it for quote unquote general mitochondrial health. I don't know that I thought very carefully about exactly what I was trying to accomplish with it.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

382.441

BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3896.283

So 200 milligrams a day of coenzyme Q10 can be... can facilitate some of that.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3916.098

You know, as people are hearing this, they're probably thinking, okay, well, these are just, you know, this is what I call anecdata or whatever. I, you know, I don't have to remind people that you're a board certified physician.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3925.208

I think that what was still ringing in the back of my mind this entire conversation, even though I'm paying very careful attention, is that most of the drugs that are prescribed in this country are off label. Yeah. I think that just like, I don't think I've ever heard that stated out loud. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah, yeah.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3941.189

So the idea that people would take something that wasn't shown in a clinical trial to be effective for purpose A, that it gets approved for purpose A, but then can be prescribed by doctors for purpose B, C, D, or E. Right. I mean, you're not telling me this is commonplace. You're telling me this is the majority of prescription drugs.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

3987.35

And does that ever cycle back to the clinical trials or no, this just becomes physician understanding and lore like, hey, yeah, you know, I've got patients that, you know, they get on azithromycin and their acne clears up. By the way, I'm not saying that folks, I'm not a physician, but But for instance.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

401.291

First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4045.369

So interesting. It is amazing. I think also I'm reminded that medicine, as beautiful a field as it is, I have tremendous respect for it, of course, is a field of fairly siloed training. And I love the idea that now, thanks to public education efforts like this one,

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4071.825

that you're providing us that physicians learn from each other in a much broader way and can potentially hear about what drugs can be useful for this or that. The other thing, and this is not editorial, this is a real observation. Pharmaceutical companies are very interested in the other uses of already approved drugs. Sure.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4090.618

The research and development process for a drug, the safety evaluation is incredibly expensive. So they want nothing more than to take a drug that's already been approved for one purpose and to take that already safety approved drug and find other uses. How are they not circling back to the off-label use and understanding of these compounds and

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4113.277

and then essentially marketing them for these other purposes. Or I guess with Ozempic, that's exactly what happened.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

42.508

We have many different thousands of peptides in our brain and body, and they perform a variety of different roles. Dr. Conover's expertise is in the use of exogenous, that is, peptides that one takes, exogenous peptides for activating multiple pathways in the brain and body to augment health.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

420.803

Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With better help, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

436.753

Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or looking for a parking spot. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4401.544

Well, thank you for the kind words. I mean, the birth of the podcast did take place during the pandemic and in large part because I saw, everybody getting very anxious, their circadian rhythms disrupted. And those were focuses of my laboratory.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4418.313

And frankly, when I was a postdoc and graduate student, but especially as I got a little older in my years, I couldn't believe that I was reading these papers about how important it morning sunlight is and all these things. But then my colleagues were all getting sick and dying around me or getting what we call the tenured look where they show up, you know, start their job.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4436.53

And five years later, they look like they've aged 25 years. And I realized that I wanted to avoid that. So I've always just enjoyed learning and sharing science and health tools. And so thank you for the kind words. I've, I've certainly, um,

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4452.096

been kind of both astonished and positively amazed in the ways that the pandemic and the post pandemic years, I like to think we're in the post pandemic years. I think we can safely say that now. how they've drawn people's attention to this idea that they need to take agency into their own healthcare. That no one, no pill, potion, injection, et cetera, can replace good behaviors.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4477.865

Pills, potions, and injections can potentially augment those good behaviors and get people going down the right path, which is what we're talking about today. But that it's really a personal responsibility. I mean, no... No one can give us a calmer mind. No one can give us a healthier body. No one can do that, right?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4496.281

It's interesting that some of the wealthiest people in the world, the new thing isn't for people to boast about their yachts or their properties. It's about... It's about their vitality, their longevity, because that's the thing that I suppose in some sense money can start to buy, but it doesn't require a ton of funds to take great care of one's body and mind.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

457.368

And now for my discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. Dr. Craig Conover. Welcome.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4601.013

Yeah. Well, and I appreciate that you're bringing up this notion that, you know, just stacking more and more behaviors, like you got to crush a workout and do sauna. And that is not the message. You know, sometimes we get teased and there's some good comedy takes on me that make me chuckle now and again. Yeah. But that's not the approach. These are tools that people can... It's a buffet.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4624.801

And I think most everyone agrees that sleep is key. Most everyone agrees that exercise is key. Nutrition is key. Great social connection is key. When it comes to... because I want to make sure that we circle back to this. When it comes to the peptides, it seems that one of your approaches, if I may, is to kind of raise the tide so that the boat can get out to sea.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

463.733

I appreciate the invitation to be here. I'm thrilled that you're here. We are going to launch ourselves into the space that is called peptides.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4649.456

And we were talking about these growth hormone secretagogues. We covered... GH-RP6, which is the one that stimulates appetite, it's probably going to be a niche case condition that people would want to use that. Ipramirelin, tesamirelin, sermirelin. I get a lot of questions about, is it MK-677? Yeah. What in the world is MK-677? It sounds like a weapon.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4683.039

So it stimulates appetite. It does. It can stimulate cortisol prolactin. It sounds like a not good situation for most people.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

473.799

And it's an interesting space.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

476.18

Because I think most people probably don't know what a peptide is. They should feel no guilt or shame about that. Right. I'm sure you'll tell us. But this area of medicine... that people broadly refer to as peptides is picking up a lot of momentum, even though it's been around for a long time.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4772.594

Which are the growth hormone secretagogues that your more typical patients who don't want to stimulate appetite, both male and female patients prefer? What are you compounding for them?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4822.273

Does not spike appetite.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4824.554

So this is taken first thing in the morning. You get an additional growth hormone release. Yes, you do. Yeah, you do in the early mornings when you're waking up. And you used to compound it with CJC-1295 to get the other pathways involved that can help. But now CJC has been taken out by the FDA. Right. But hexarone still exists.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4869.915

We were talking about coenzyme Q10 and the Krebs cycle. And I forgot to close the hatch on supplements more broadly. Again, doesn't sound like you're a big fan of taking lots of pills and capsules. I think some people will take that as a relief. I think a lot of people get tired of... taking a lot of pills. Some people don't like to do that.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

4892.747

What are some of the other things that you do take besides coenzyme Q10? Earlier, we were talking about methylated vitamins. Methylated B vitamins. Yeah. This is becoming increasingly popular. We're starting to hear more about methylation and methylated compounds. Could you educate us on methylated B vitamins?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

495.072

And I find it particularly interesting because there are many people using peptides for very specific purposes, but Most people haven't really heard of the various peptides that are out there. And if anything, we can be sure that in the years to come, peptides are going to be increasingly popular. And there's, of course, the incredibly popular peptide of GLP-1 agonist. For sure. Taking over.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5020.825

And again, those methylated B vitamins are methylated B12.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5052.974

You're not supposed to drink caffeine too late in the day. Lately what I've – I don't know. This is wrong to bring up on this podcast, but I can't help myself – I love yerba mate in the morning and afternoon. Coffee in the morning now makes me feel nauseous. I don't know if I'm pregnant or something, but it makes me feel nauseous. But I love the taste of coffee in the afternoon.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5072.81

This is like a midlife thing. I don't know what it is. So now in the afternoon, like around 1 or 2 p.m., even just the smallest amount of coffee, it's like,

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5081.6

the most delicious thing i've ever tasted yeah i love coffee um it can mess with your sleep too late in the day but um that's a perfect segue to talk about sleep sure um because one thing that i know you've done a lot of work on and with are these peptides that can improve sleep not just by virtue of enhancing growth hormone release but um you know i'll just be very direct i um i

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5105.402

For the last, gosh, like four to six months, I've had the opportunity to try pinellin and injectable pinellin combined with glycine. Goodness gracious, in the positive sense of the goodness gracious, you're from the South, so I don't know where people have it.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5127.561

Never before have I found something that can improve the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I get besides rapid eye movement sleep deprivation. You know, sleep deprivation, the next night you'll get a compensatory effect. That's not the way to increase your REM sleep, folks. You know, there are a lot of things like high intensity exercise that improve my slow wave deep sleep.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5147.517

Cold plunge early in the day improves slowly. Deep sleep. There have been a few other things. But with pineal, and by the way, I'm not doing this every night. I do this occasionally. I ran a little experiment and I track my sleep using the sleep tracker that's in eight sleep. And it's doubling the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I'm getting. Yeah. Doubling. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5166.886

Which is, so like from an hour to two hours or from an hour and 30, it's like nearly three hours, you know? Even I posted a picture of a sleep score with some rapid eye movement sleep. It's not something I typically do. Yeah. But even the... the most competitive of biohackers, Brian Johnson, was like, oh, nice sleep score, you know?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5188.07

Now, he touts a sleep score that's perfect every night for, you know, for every night, but, and I'm kind of poking at Brian, because we like to poke back and forth. We're friendly with one another. So the point being that Pinelan is a remarkable, way to increase rapid eye movement sleep.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5206.363

I have very little knowledge about it, except that my understanding is that it might stimulate some regeneration or stimulation of the pineal sites of the pineal.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5224.379

I hope the FDA doesn't nuke it as a consequence of this conversation.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5249.967

And for my understanding, epitalin also is involved in DNA repair and has been explored in animal studies for... trying to offset vision loss and some retinal degenerative conditions.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

527.006

So to drop into this and make sure everyone's on the same page, what is a peptide?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5292.912

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it makes things other than melatonin. That's for sure.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5315.871

I think of... The millions of people that suffer from lack of rapid eye movement sleep, the lack of neuroplasticity that can be the consequence of that, the lack of healthy removal of emotional labels on previous day memories.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5334.56

that is the consequence of REM deprivation, the enormous impact on depression rates, the enormous impact on pretty much every mental health issue is made worse by, by lack of REM sleep. So I, I say, or I raised this conversation about pineal and with a little bit of trepidation, because I do worry that on the one hand, people will see it as a miracle drug. That's not what we're talking about.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5356.038

It has this effect, but at the same time, I, Okay, I'll just say that there's another drug that was released recently. This is an FDA-approved drug in the category of sleep drugs called the DORAS. So it works a little differently. It doesn't push on the sleepiness system, so to speak. It suppresses the wakefulness system. And the idea is that it's supposed to increase REM sleep.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5379.456

It was by name Quivivic and things like that. I tried it. It was a total disaster for me. I fell asleep, woke up three hours later, couldn't fall back asleep. I tried it. It was lower dosage. It's extremely expensive as well. So I'm going to piss off whoever makes Quivivic. I forget who makes it. It was a complete disaster for me. Pinelan has been incredible.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5401.037

And here's what's really interesting about it to me is that it seems to improve my sleep on the nights when I don't take it, which makes total sense if it indeed is providing some regeneration of the pineal sites that make melatonin and others.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5415.858

So here we're talking about something that one could potentially pulse with now and again and get improvement in sleep every night. Yes.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5523.45

Interesting. We haven't done an episode of this podcast yet on heavy metals, but I'm very interested in this because many people write to me asking about metal toxicity and about mold toxicity.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5651.17

We say on the side of the road, you mean in the liver.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5657.178

You're not about screening it in the, you're talking about, building up of debris, cellular debris with it, or excuse me, metabolic debris within your body.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5684.782

So when people take a peptide that's injectable, pineal and glycine, the ganglycine, obviously, but for let's say somebody doesn't have access to you or to for whatever reason, there's a barrier. to getting a hold of those peptides. Can people take glycine orally?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5744.236

I'm still a big fan of things like magnesium threonate, apigenin, which is a chamomile derivative. And I'll try glycine. I think a few years back I was using a little bit of glycine, but it was more like 1,000 milligrams. But now that it's in the injectable peptide, the pinelon, I don't take it. Is there an oral form of pinelon that works?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

577.006

Maybe just to orient ourselves, we should talk about GLP-1 first, not because it's necessarily the category of peptides that I think people would want to consider for themselves, but because most people have probably heard of semaglutide and Munjaro and things like that. Sure. So how long ago was it that humans started injecting GLP-1 agonists in order to lose weight?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5802.436

Yeah. And as we're talking about this, I'm realizing, unfortunately, just the way the internet works, that people are going to start selling likely as a consequence of this conversation, we'll start selling pineal. And, but you need to know that you're actually getting pineal. And I mean, it's very easy for somebody to just pop something up on Amazon and sell it.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5820.519

And maybe they just throw some melatonin in there and call it pineal. And like there, there's a lot of like BS stuff out there. So this is why the compounding pharmacy component and working with a physician.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5839.209

Do you think the pharmaceutical companies are going to move into these other peptides? I mean, certainly ipamorelin for the reduction in visceral body fat, that's an FDA-approved drug. So is sermorelin an FDA-approved drug? Mm-hmm. The GLP-1 agonists, FDA-approved drugs. So the FDA is unlikely to pull those, but they're a blockbuster, especially GLP-1.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5864.259

I mean, they're making not even a small fortune but a large fortune.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5943.754

earlier you mentioned stem cell therapies. Those are not FDA approved in this country.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5971.596

and you give it back within four hours then that is allowed with under the fda guidelines interesting there was this clinic in um florida a few years ago was um touting stem cell therapies for macular degeneration injected some stem cells into these patients eyes and they went blind really quickly and they were not blind prior to the injections

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

5996.657

That, to my understanding, caused a severe setback to the whole field. I'm old enough to remember when gene therapy was set back by about 10 years because a patient received gene therapy, which is now pretty common for certain diseases, and the patient died. It's unclear exactly why they died, but that delayed the field of gene therapy by at least a decade.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

60.451

Now, of course, peptides such as insulin have been used for many years now to treat things like diabetes, but today we talk about novel peptides, including GLP-1, so these are glucagon-like peptide analogs, Things like Ozempic and Monjaro, which I realize are a bit controversial. However, today we talk about the micro dosing of those peptides.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6023.607

I mean, this country is very conservative when it comes to the approval of new therapeutics.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6029.011

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6072.237

Mm-hmm.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6073.477

Well, certainly you have the clinical data to back those statements. Thymusin alpha-1, what is this peptide? But maybe before we discuss it, did the FDA nuke thymusin alpha-1? They sure did. Whoa. Okay. They're coming through with a howitzer and taking out all these peptides. They are. Okay. Well, then let's keep this relatively brief. What was thymusin alpha-1 being used for previously? Okay.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6148.946

I hear a lot of complaints about brain fog with long COVID and brain fog generally. Cerebrolysin is a very interesting compound. Yeah. My understanding is that Cerebral Lysine is available in Europe more broadly than it is in the U.S. Is it still? It's available here. Did the FDA, is it taken out? No, it's still available. Okay, all right. Cerebral Lysine made the cut.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6173.604

We'll see what happens after this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6224.363

For that reason. My understanding is that cerebral lysin is a kind of a cocktail of brain-derived nootrophic factor, ciliary nootrophic factor, like some other things. It's not one thing.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6257.566

So as long as we're talking about maintaining or boosting cognitive function, here's one I've never tried, but you and I have talked a little bit about. And it's still seen as kind of renegade, but it's becoming more commonplace. And that's methylene blue. And I always make the joke that I used to use methylene blue to clean my fish tanks. Because I'm a big fish tank aficionado.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6282.099

At least I was when I was a kid. Right now, I don't have a tank, but it's empty. No pun intended. What is methylene blue and what are people using it for? And does it turn your tongue blue?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6363.772

Is it used as a performance-enhancing drug in endurance sports? Because this sounds like the kind of thing that cyclists would really want to use. For sure. Check with your local governing body. This is always a question I get. People are like, they hear something on the podcast and they go, can I take it or am I going to get disqualified?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6379.421

And I always say, I have no idea if you'll get disqualified.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6452.344

There aren't circuits for being smart. There are circuits for task switching, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6456.788

So it's 10 milligrams of methylene blue combined, and you've got some other things in the cocktail version that you make. Take it in the morning on an empty stomach.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6620.808

So earlier you mentioned a patient, or maybe it was patients, plural, that experienced a more rapid transition out of a COVID infection or maybe more recovery from long COVID symptoms, et cetera. It reminded me of the second time. I got COVID, far less intense than the first time. But the second time I got COVID, I had an amazing experience where my COVID test was very strong band.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6652.295

It was very clear. Like I had COVID. There was no question about it. I didn't feel good. I was fatigued. wasn't super severe. I would put it kind of on a six out of 10 on the kind of malaise level. No fever. Okay. So I stayed in bed and stayed away from people, this sort of thing. But I did an NAD infusion. I of course told them I had COVID. They came over, they gave me an NAD infusion.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6682.694

Correlation is not causation, but I think it was 750 milligram NAD infusion over the course of about 45 minutes. I had the usual feelings that one gets when you get an NAD infusion of you feel like an elephant is stepping on your legs. Your chest kind of cramps. And then when that stops, you feel much better than you go into the thing. The band was absent the next day. My symptoms were...

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6711.775

I went from, I don't want to say gone. I went from, you know, like a five, six out of 10, as I mentioned, to like a two out of 10. And within another 48 hours, I was good to go and better. Now this is correlation, not causation. I don't know what was going on. It could have been the saline bag, right? Could have been any number of things.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6731.193

But the shift from a dark band to no band was so dramatic that I took another test after the no band. And then, of course, the next day and the next day, this kind of thing. It's interesting. I don't know what it means. But one wonders whether or not it's just a – global way of combating inflammation.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6754.525

Anytime I think about a systemic effect, and the reason I raise this is that I don't want to give the impression that I think that NAD is specifically in the pathway that was targeted, but that by Brain and body were inflamed. Clearly, I had an infection. You could have a flu. You could have a cold. You're inflamed. What are your thoughts on that anecdote?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6775.909

Again, it's just anecdote, but what are your clinical reflections?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6866.408

Amazing. Yeah. I take sublingual NMN each day. It makes my hair grow ridiculously fast. I've done the control experiments. I'm a scientist. I know how to do control experiments. It's still just N of one. It's just me. Makes my nails grow really fast. Makes my hair grow fast. That's the major consequence. By the way, I want to be clear.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6883.894

I don't have any stake in any company that sells NAD or NAD infusion. So I'm just reporting what I'm reporting. I think it's great. Somebody who's quite expert in the NAD Pathway, Charles Brenner, who I believe has a relationship to a company that makes NR supplements. I think that's correct. Encouraged me to try NR. I took these NR supplements.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6906.025

This is what, it's NAD minus a phosphate group is my understanding. And those I took orally. I couldn't tell if I got the same or different effect because I was taking them together. I didn't continue to take them because compared to NMN, it was very expensive.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6924.676

And I just stopped taking it. So that's why I use Sublingual NMN. But In brief discussions with Charles and forging online, it seems that there is some literature, human clinical literature, showing that NR can reduce inflammation. Is that right?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

6943.533

Less data that NMN can reduce inflammation, at least lack of human studies. Okay. So we're still kind of in the, it's still murky, foggy territory with respect to the research and clinical- And the biochemistry. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7033.311

So in the backdrop of our conversation today, there have been a number of themes. But one of the themes that seems to keep coming up is that there are a lot of things about medicine that we don't understand. Totally. And yet there are tools that seem to work for certain people extremely well. A few years ago, I went to a meeting. This is a foundation meeting, a foundation I was a part of.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7055.242

where you get to see talks from really the best of the best laboratories, and they only show unpublished data. And at the time – I don't know if this paper is published yet, but at the time they were showing that they took people that were diagnosed with – major depression. And they start doing a bunch of metabolomics on them. Now this sounds pretty standard for social media.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7077.448

It's actually pretty heretical. Not a lot of places have done this right. So a couple thousand patients blood draws, they're trying to figure out, they ask a simple question, are there any specific vitamin deficiencies that are associated with depression? And as I recall, they identified a few different types of vitamin deficiencies.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7098.582

So it's not like one vitamin, it's not always methylated B6 or something like that, or excuse me, it's not always B6 or B12. But they found these clusters of patients that had major depression that were deficient in a particular B vitamin, they supplemented back the B vitamin and lo and behold, those patients showed remission of their depression.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7119.67

So one could conveniently conclude, oh, well, all depression is a B vitamin deficiency, but of course that's not true, right? More likely depression like fever is just a raw description of symptoms. But what was so exciting about this talk, to me anyway, was that people were starting to look at nutritional deficiencies as a potential source of mental illness.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7141.474

which now has a bit more traction, but at the time was like, whoa, what are we really saying here? I thought all of depression was a serotonin deficiency, right? This kind of thing. So when you talk about NAD having these transformative effects and the fact that NAD can kind of raise the tide on a number of different biological processes, to me, it makes perfect sense.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7160.026

It might've kicked off some mitochondrial pathway or some cellular pathway that then fills in a blank that's desperately needed. Is that one way that we can conceptualize this? That makes total sense to me. Okay. I like how you've described it. So how often do you encourage your already healthy patients to do NAD infusions? What are the dosages?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7178.18

I should mention the NAD infusions for most people are a little bit costly.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7182.604

They're like anywhere from... $500 to $1,000. Or more. Yeah, or more. If you're in Los Angeles.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7230.34

Putting 500 milligrams in over the course of 45 minutes is going to be very uncomfortable. Many people take an anti-nausea med.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

724.338

What is your opinion? My understanding is that, well, there's sort of two camps on this, it seems. Yeah. At least two camps. One camp seems really bullish on this. They seem very excited about this drug. The other camp seems to point to the fact that one may be creating a drug dependency. Mm-hmm. That it's very expensive.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7419.575

Of all the things we've discussed?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

744.458

And they point to the also potency of lifestyle factors like exercise and caloric restriction, eating mostly non-processed foods, et cetera, as a quote-unquote better alternative. I'm not necessarily saying that. I think they both have their place. To me, it seems very contextual. But as a clinician, I'm curious what you think.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7441.226

Well, that's a significant statement. So 100 milligrams injected subcutaneously, you get a little bit of stomach cramping.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7448.256

As compared to the 500 milligrams to 750 or 1,000 milligrams that one brings in IV. The fastest I've ever dripped it in was... I think like 40 minutes. I can tell you the record. What's the record? Three minutes and 26 seconds.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7480.467

Yeah. I found that because you have to sit there for a while, you could think, okay, well, you organize the... the plumbing correctly that you could type or something, but you feel garbage enough during the infusion that you get irritable. It's actually a very interesting window into empathy for people who have pain.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7502.116

You know, when you're in this kind of whole body kind of systemic pain and discomfort and you're getting that saliva, I'm kind of sensing it now. I have a distinct memory of this. Kind of like for people that get seasick, you think about being on a boat and walking back and forth. Get a little nauseous. Someone would walk in the room and you're like, why are they walking like that? Right.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7520.528

You know, and it's your own, it's your sense of pain. I normally don't have that response to people. I'm not a moody person in general. But then, you know, when you remove the infusion, you feel great. And all of a sudden, people seem delightful. The irritating person. It's a very interesting experiment in social empathy.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7576.881

Yeah. For people that can't afford the infusions, the injections would be the next best bet. If they can't afford those? Would it be the sublingual NMN or NR?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7589.21

Yeah. So going from most expensive to least expensive, most expensive would be IV, then it would be subcutaneous, then it would be NR, and then it would be a sublingual NMN.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7614.585

I get this itchy thing.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7626.65

And for those that are listening to this and They may recall I did an episode of this podcast with Dr. Peter Attia where we talked about NAD and NMN and NR. that was mainly focused on the research literature. You're not gonna find much. So what we're talking about here is clinical experience.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7674.055

Speaking of clinicians and science and all of this, there are a couple other peptides that have received FDA approval that are commonly in use. Things like PT141, which is in this melanocyte hormone pathway that's used... One of its FDA-approved uses is, I think the brand name is Vileci, is for female hypo-libido. So it stimulates libido in women. It's also used to stimulate libido in men.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7705.911

Is that right?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7712.535

So it's not just related to blood flow?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7786.005

It's not a very- It can look very unnatural.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7789.147

Yeah. The medial pituitary, which at least my understanding is the origin of these peptides that we're talking about now is super interesting. And you mentioned the nausea. These peptides hit multiple pathways. When we had Dr. Zachary Knight from University of California, San Francisco, on to talk about GLP-1 in a lot of detail, he mentioned that

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7810.022

some of the nausea associated with Ozempic and Manjaro and things like that relates to the fact that there are receptors for these things, not just in one

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7819.312

hypothalamic structure, but also in like areopostrema and areas of the brain that are these quote unquote primitive areas that are associated with generating nausea when you need to rid yourself of a poison that nature conveniently engineered us with neurons that when they detect chemical changes in the blood make us vomit.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7857.463

So I have two more questions. The first one is a bit of a controversial one. Okay. Today, we've talked about a lot of peptides that you've observed incredible clinical utility for. We also talked about a lot of peptides that the FDA has banned, basically, to be blunt.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7879.555

We've also talked about peptides that at one point not too long ago were considered part of kind of niche culture, like fitness or bodybuilding culture that are now approaching what will probably be trillion dollar industries over the next 10 years. things like GLP-1 agonists. So any listener with their neurons firing, we'll put two and two together and say, okay, what's the deal?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

79.825

We talk about those peptides combined with other peptides, as well as behavioral practices to offset the muscle loss associated with them. And then we dive into some lesser known peptides, but ones that are growing in use. For instance, BPC-157 or body protection compound 157, which is used to treat inflammation, to accelerate wound healing and a variety of other things.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7902.992

Obviously the FDA, I like to believe, has a genuine interest in our safety. They don't want us taking things that are dangerous for us. At the same time, there seems to be a kind of clawing back of what's out there and then a handing off to pharmaceutical companies to put out compounds for which there are tremendous profit margins. I mean, the profit margins on these are insane.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7924.229

We can't comprehend it. You can't comprehend it. So, you know, MK-677, I crossed out, right? The FDA grabbed that one. Thymusin Alpha-1, crossed out. Okay, a bunch of other things that have been... BPC-157. clawed back. So how should we frame this in our mind?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7945.523

In other words, do you think that the FDA is of genuine good intentions of trying to protect the general public and that's why they're doing this? Or is this a plan to kind of make that appear to be the case so that these can then be sold at a very, very high profit margin? And perhaps it could be both, right? It's not an either or. And I want to be very clear. Sure.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7966.843

I work at a major medical school, but I'll speak freely anyway, right? As would my colleagues. I like to think that these governing bodies have some people there at least with very good intentions. I don't think it's a bunch of bad people like writhing their hands together with getting kickbacks on pharma. I don't believe that. In fact, I know that not to be the case.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

7986.315

But what's really going on here? Because this is kind of weird. There's this huge class of compounds we call peptides that clearly have immensely – Beneficial uses in the right dosage in the right hands with the right physicians. They're being clawed back Why it's confusing.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8092.879

That was done for melanocyte-simulating hormone pathways.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8353.467

I really appreciate your take. I too rely on prescription drugs now and again. I don't know, maybe I'll lose some following for saying this, but I've had some situations where it made sense to take an antibiotic after a surgery or something. I'm not like anti-antibiotics, right? I also don't eat them like M&Ms. I also... I believe that, well, everything you said, I generally agree with.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8380.596

I don't have the clinical expertise or the nuance to really understand these governing bodies. That's one of the reasons why I'm asking today and really appreciate you shedding light on this. I think you're clearly a truth teller. You're telling us your truth from the clinical perspective, but it's clear you also have a broad optics here. And we appreciate that. Sure.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8401.152

This podcast has always been about bringing in a diverse audience. outlooks on the same things. And it's been wonderful today to be able to explore peptides, NAD, and this issue of FDA approval and FDA removal, as the case may be. You said something earlier a couple of times that I'd like to finish up on. You talked about positive thoughts.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8425.353

You're a physician, not a psychologist, but you're a physician. and you're in the business of making people feel better. And it's clear to me that among your many talents, you have great powers of observation. So what is this thing about positive thoughts? I mean, there are a lot of neuro immunological data out there showing that, you know, stress makes us sick.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8448.863

If we stress too long for you repeatedly for too for too long, stress in the short period is actually good for us, right? There are some data showing that positive thoughts can enhance immune system function, et cetera. The data are pretty cool. Clinically, however, what's your observation about mindset and health?

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8673.218

beautifully said and so grateful to you for doing that within your clinical practice for making that decision a few years back to shift over to being you know aligned with your purpose and and the way that you've now expanded your practice to public education will provide links to your practice and to your public education efforts and for coming here to do this

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8696.861

significant public education effort about peptides and other compounds and regulatory bodies and also just the field of medicine. And also just, you know, I think so often we hear from scientists or from physicians and we forget the human component and what's what's so What's so beautiful about what you do and the way you do it is that your humanity really comes through.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8720.196

So it really does. I can tell you really care. And I know our listeners and viewers can tell as well. Thank you. As this field evolves and advances, please come back and talk to us again.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8733.346

Meanwhile, again, we'll provide links so that people can find you and some of the resources that... back up what we've discussed today. And Craig, Dr. Conover, thank you ever so much.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8779.955

Okay. Come back again. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. To learn more about his work and his clinic, as well as to find links to some of the things discussed in today's episode, please see the show note captions.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8794.884

And if you'd like to learn more about peptides, including some of the ones that we discussed today, but also some additional ones, please see the link to the solo episode that I did about peptide therapies in the captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8812.158

In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8826.107

If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8843.577

This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8863.274

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8880.61

So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8897.823

If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs. Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, Deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8918.599

We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps, all backed by science. And all of which again is completely zero cost. To subscribe, simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

8937.472

And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Craig Conover. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

899.002

Yeah, it sounds like from the story you just told us that it's not just about an aesthetic change that motivates people to lean into other aspects of their health and life when they lose some weight, that it's also just the sheer...

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

913.091

literal weight and also that adipose tissue, fat tissue, you know, produces a lot of hormones that we know impact the brain and brain function, which is not to say that there aren't people out there with a lot of adipose tissues who, aren't extremely bright and motivated, et cetera. But many people who are carrying excess body fat don't feel good. They report brain fog, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

934.697

And I think now, thanks to Chris Palmer and actually at Stanford, there's also a program in metabolic psychiatry. We're starting to see or understand and appreciate the link between adipose tissue and brain health or lack of brain health in most cases. So in the case of GLP-1, People have criticized it, saying that a fair percentage of the weight that's lost is lean body mass, muscle loss.

Huberman Lab

Peptide & Hormone Therapies for Health, Performance & Longevity | Dr. Craig Koniver

961.596

But it seems to me that can be remedied pretty easily if people just do some resistance training.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and bestselling author and is considered one of the world's leading experts on relationships.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10003.382

I rarely ask guests on this podcast to editorialize about other guests, but here it feels appropriate. Bill Eddy was on this podcast. He's a therapist and lawyer, and he wrote the book, I think it was like Five Types of People That Will Ruin Your Life.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10017.831

And one of the cardinal features of a person that he claimed will ruin your life is somebody, one of the early warning signs, let's not say cardinal features, but is somebody who has a story about their past failures that's always about how they were wronged by somebody else.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10039.395

Like the victim stance. Like there's no other word for it. People who are constantly talking about how they were a victim of somebody else.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10049.875

Help rejecting complainer.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10118.985

I'm guessing you see this sometimes in therapy.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10122.946

Yeah. We've been making a fair number of assumptions about relationship structure. There are so many different permutations these days that we don't have to explore them all. Do you think that some people are just not well suited for romantic relationships?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10141.963

I've known a few people in my lifetime, a former advisor who he passed away, as I mentioned earlier, but who had tried romantic relationships and decided they weren't for him. Most everyone I know in my life is either partnered or yeah, pretty much. Thank goodness, happily so.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10166.175

But are there people for whom like they just opt out of the game for reasons that are healthy as opposed to fear of rejection or otherwise?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10277.071

Throughout today's conversation, I feel like what seems to be in contrast is our stories about ourselves and other people and life versus just really being present. This image of the Teflon pan is really – kind of looping in my head because this idea that, you know, positive thing happens, it slips right off. Negative thing sticks. What does that mean?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1028.388

To go a little bit further into this idea, which, by the way, I fully subscribe to based on your explanation of this and my belief that our unconscious mind is driving a lot of our choices, my understanding is that what you just described – doesn't adhere to mom, dad, male, female compartmentalization.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10304.706

It's like we create a story about the negative thing and that the story about the positive thing was a very brief story. It was like one of those three sentence poems or something and then it's gone. Versus presence, like the more presence we can bring to something, the more positive, meaningful experience we can extract from it. I really believe this.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10326.138

I learned this in science actually, because I had an absolutely spectacular neuroanatomy professor when I was an undergraduate. And he said, when you look down the microscope, if you're looking for something, You'll find it, but you're going to miss all this context of like the inputs to that structure and you lose the pattern recognition that's going to serve you going forward.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10346.892

So I learned I had this – I had so much time back then. I would just sit at night as a graduate student after I left my undergrad and went on to 11. I would just like stare at brain tissue and you learn that –

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10359.899

about it in conscious and unconscious ways and then later when you're doing an experiment you see things like oh you know there's a there's a deficit here there's a real effect here and and you and you learn that that through presence you um You're like experiencing things so much differently than if you go looking for something.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10379.099

In science, if you go looking for something, it's actually bad science.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10382.924

And I've tried to transport that onto relationship in some ways, like in relation to things and people and dogs and all the things in life if you're really present. Like the story's writing itself, but you're not scripting it out. I don't think I have a language for this. Rick Rubin's talked a little bit about this in his book, The Creative Act.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10402.232

Like we need to be on the front end of the vehicle, experiencing space and time as it's happening, as opposed to sitting next to it or in it and kind of creating a narrative about what's happening around us. Does that make sense?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1052.053

And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of people will hear what you just said and assume, okay, if my dad hurt me in the following ways, then let's say it's a woman. And she said, you know, my dad hurt me in the following ways. Maybe he was a drinker, withdrawn, or he was violent or whatever. Then that woman will seek out men that mimic that. here I'm assuming heterosexual relationship.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10555.538

Yeah, it seems that like one of the challenges of being human is unless somebody is a narcissist where they basically dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel good, in which case they miss out on so much of life and everyone can't stand them anyway.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10572.153

If you're a permeable person, like you're paying attention to what people say, you're trying to integrate that, you're trying to do better, be better. The hard part is being semi-permeable. You have to know what to let in, what to reject, what to accept, what to work on. I mean, it's a challenging thing, this process of being a person in relation to others, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

107.8

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb, welcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10739.86

I feel like the whole landscape around relationships has changed so much in the last 20, 30 years. It seems like in some ways for the better, like there's a lot more discussion about the sorts of things that you're explaining and better understanding of self, how to show up better, better choice making and so on. I was thinking about the

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10762.109

At the same time, this example you mentioned before, like someone in their teens or 20s, a couple will break up, and then somebody's posting all these things about them.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10772.951

That kind of quote-unquote feedback, because it's not really feedback, it's more signaling and posturing about what they aren't as opposed to what the other person is, has got to create pretty detrimental stories in the person that it's about, right? Because they have the choice of either believing those things um, or disbelieving them.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1078.059

But if her mother was the one that was the drinker, violent, and or withdrawn, and she's heterosexual, my understanding is based on the dynamics that you describe, if she will find those traits in a man, because she's heterosexual, she's seeking men for romantic partners. And I think that's very important. I think that sometimes we put the mom-dad relationship

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10795.32

Um, but it's not really an opportunity for growth in the same way that sitting down with somebody and saying like, Hey, these were some things that you did well, and here are some things that didn't go well. Um, and I guess how much of the story for, um, for men and women, young men and women nowadays and older, do you think like, uh, is being, uh,

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10819.887

written through what we hear about the opposite sex, right? Like in the last, I would say 10, 15 years, there hasn't really been a moment of really trying to prop young boys up and men of it's like, like maleness is great. Like that's not something you hear very often. And I certainly understand why there was a need and an effort to balance opportunities, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10844.019

But a lot of young guys grew up hearing that maleness, having a Y chromosome is a bad thing, that testosterone is bad or something like that. And I've been asked to comment on this more and more recently in the press, and I only know my experience and what I observe, but... I mean, you take any group and tell them that they're bad. That hasn't really worked out well for any group or for society.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

10907.443

I think I think

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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labels on top of the attraction to, again, staying in the heterosexual framework here, the opposite sex framework. And then people say, well, why is it that this woman always seeks out these, like what ended up being really terrible guys? Like she had such a great dad, but she had a dreadful mom.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11176.408

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11374.754

Thank you very much.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1164.53

Such a flaw in our wiring.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11823.701

Love it. I love this concept of make the choice that is going to bring the bigger life. Yeah. Because as you pointed out, it's so easy for people to stay stuck in what is unpleasant but hasn't killed them yet.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11884.887

I love a vote in favor of people enjoying their life more and hopefully deriving more self-respect by doing it. This asceticism of we're going to deprive ourselves of things in order to respect ourselves, even though I value discipline and I think learning to enjoy life is also important.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11924.565

So much here. Laurie, thank you so much for the work you do with your patients slash clients slash we don't have a better word for it. And also your willingness to get out and teach and literally every two weeks, you know, field questions from the general public. It's not easy to do, I imagine. Clearly, you're thinking about things past, present, and future. And people really need these tools.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11954.029

And not everyone will make it into your office, unfortunately, and have the experience of working one-on-one with you. But I think that the workbook, I'm so glad that came up so that people have an opportunity to put these things into action and You've given us a ton to work with here. I listed out many things. I won't list them out here.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11972.905

We'll timestamp this episode in detail so people can go back and find them. Yeah, I've learned a ton. I'm going to put this to action and hopefully you'll come back again and talk with us about what's new because I know this is an evolving field and as the landscape of society changes, we're going to need new tools. But it sounds like the fundamentals are really in there.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

11994.743

It involves self-reflection. I love this thing about a list of the things that make us difficult to be with as opposed to the list of the things we want in other people. And that Teflon pan is something I'm going to think about a lot.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

12014.943

Well, thank you. You've certainly enriched my thinking about it, and I'm sure everyone listening as well.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

12021.616

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did. To learn more about Lori Gottlieb's work and to find links to her excellent book and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

12057.379

That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

12074.294

It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1212.56

You said that people will pick the person who's exactly wrong for them, who feels exactly right, at least at first. Right. that it has this kind of come here, this summoning aspect to it. Like we feel drawn to it. It feels drawn to us. I mean, that's how relationships start after all, one would hope. But in this case, you said that people –

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1239.568

come to find that that person is exact harbors some of the exact same traits i'm calling them that behaviors traits so you know whatever it is that hurt them in the context of their child parent relationship why do you think um initially it presents as the opposite

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

125.065

What's the first thing you ask a patient when you're meeting them for the first time?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1351.748

I think what you're describing is a pervasive feature of – being human, if I may, there's this kid, he's now a young adult, but I've watched grow up from a very young age who got into college. He was doing really well. Then he fell in love. He made the decision to leave school. The relationship ended and I was talking to him recently and he's kind of in this kind of dizzying spin of like,

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

138.433

And are you listening both to the content of their words and their tone, their physicality?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1381.291

thinking about how great things were, how he blew it. And he's young. I'm like, listen, you're good. Like, he didn't drop out. He just withdrew. He can go back and, you know, he'll find another relationship. But, you know, and I empathize with him. But I passed something along to him that was actually discussed by a former guest on this podcast, Josh Waitzkin, who was a former child trust project.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1402.041

He's gone on to do a number of things. And he said exactly what you're saying, which is in a different context. He said, we... get so attached to our current identity and our past identity and trying to resolve those that we're more willing to stay in that state of discomfort than we are to

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1475.234

are are terrible to you but then you go out on dates with these like great guys and she's like yeah no chemistry no chemistry yeah let's talk about that what what what is the the flip side is the lack of of interest in somebody that doesn't um overtly or uh covertly harbor the the the painful thing that you're so used to

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1591.078

One of the things that I've noticed in my own life is that as I've gotten older, I'll be 50 later this year. Been looking forward to that. I feel great. But some of the things that I assumed for so many years, like slow is low. Like when things are really slow, like for many years, it felt kind of depressive. Now I love slow, mellow, like peace is the thing that I'm just I savor so much.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1623.871

But for so many years, I think what you're describing, that sort of activation state of excitement, that was a pretty wild youth. And then, you know, I mean, I like adventure and I'd taken on at times dangerous adventures that I shouldn't have lived. told myself I wouldn't do them again, picked a different adventure.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1641.407

But even in like my scientific career or podcasting, things that feel at times like a bit of a tightrope walk, just given the number of variables that I can't control just by virtue of what they are and the challenge of like long cycles of trying to publish. Like they're kind of scary at some level. It's your profession after all. But I did the same thing in a lot of my relationships.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1662.679

Lovely people in some cases, some cases not, but in most cases, fortunately for me, lovely people. But there was this sense that like if something felt like a little bit of an upstate, kind of like a bit more of autonomic arousal or a lot more autonomic arousal, that it had this kind of magnetic quality to it. Whereas I think, and I'm not joking or lying here, I think owning a bulldog

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1688.351

taught me how to really savor relaxing i'm not saying this just to highlight costello again i mean i observed his relationship to the world and the bulldogs contract with its owner is is an amazing one that i think i learned a lot from the contract is i will die for you i will literally give up my life to protect you andrew but if that's not on the line i'm not gonna do anything

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1715.08

We're just going to sit here and enjoy the sunshine.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1717.623

We're just going to breathe and we're going to eat food.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1720.365

Friends are coming over and I'll get excited. And, you know, and I'm not trying to make too much of this. I really noticed. I was like, wow, he needs so little to be blissful. And yet I know that if like push came to shove, like he's on my side, we've got each other's backs.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1737.623

As opposed to, let's talk about a more human contract of like this picture or story of a couple that they have about themselves. Ride or die is something people say a lot nowadays. It's a beautiful concept, right? Loyalty, like you're in it together no matter what. But there's a calm version of that, like ride or die. And then there's like ride or die, like we'll take on anything.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1758.913

We'll bring in chaos. We'll be the chaos. And we just don't quit.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

1763.775

Very different activation states. Oh, absolutely. And it took me 49 years to learn this. I see it in professional relationships, too. People want the exciting thing, the big build. And then they're like, it's the chaos of like, oh, this founder left and this person. It's like, well, of course, it started in drama. It's going to end in drama. Does this some of this resonate?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

197.866

Do you think, because I've heard, but I don't know if it's true, do you think that some people... tend to create a lot of internal and perhaps external narrative about what happened, who they are, how people are in the world, how they're not in the world. A lot of words to their experience, either spoken or internally versus people who maybe experienced life a little bit differently.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2058.854

Yeah, one certainly wouldn't want to be bored in somebody else's presence, but calm seems like a good touch point to look for as opposed to this activation state.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2072.25

You know, maybe it's the neurobiologist in me, and I'm guilty of also working on this autonomic arousal thing for so many years, this seesaw in us of being like upstates that can either be stress or bliss and downstates, which can either be depression and fatigue or can just be like pleasant relaxation. Like the label becomes critical, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2090.774

Alert and stressed versus alert and elated is- Very different. Same level of alertness, two very different things. Same, you know, depressed versus peaceful. when relaxed, you know, and looking for or trying to figure out what sorts of interactions bring about that kind of even seesaw might be best, not one or the other, maybe erring even a little bit more towards peace.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2170.938

I'll just say yes and yes to both those statements. I think peace is, it's not everything, but it's necessary but not sufficient, as we say. If I may, I'd like to get kind of a little deep and abstract along this dimension of

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2189.827

why people are so much more willing to stay in a state that doesn't feel good versus risk the unknown and the opportunity to win in relationship, in life, in career, et cetera. Because I do believe that. I happen to be reading, it's a hard book, a genuinely difficult book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading Ernst Becker's, The Denial of Death. Highly recommend it to everyone.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2220.066

Won a Pulitzer, after all. You don't need my endorsement. And, you know, I mean, the central thesis of the book, right, is that we're a weird species because we understand that we're going to die at some point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

228.189

Once somebody said in a comment on Instagram, and I still think about this, they said, I don't think in words, I think in feels. And my first reaction was like, yeah, I'm from Northern California and people talk that way sometimes. So I thought that's interesting. Maybe there are a lot of people who, for whom language isn't the primary mode of understanding what's going on around them.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

24.468

how to find relationships, how to be in relationships effectively, how to leave relationships if necessary, how to grieve them after they're gone, and how to renew them, all from the perspective of looking inward at ourselves and the stories about ourselves and others that we tell ourselves that can lead us to what we want and what's best for us or that lead us away from those things.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2602.503

Thank you.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

2997.125

With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3015.714

They're incredibly delicious and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Gosh, so much to go into here. This thing about vitality is so key. A friend recently said to me something.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3039.362

I was talking about how, gosh, there's like these certain interactions in life that are like, I feel like they like pull me in and I don't like them. And then it just like really takes away from what I know I should be doing. And he said, you know, you have to do things right. that energize you? And immediately I thought, yes, and be very careful about the things that activate us.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3066.435

Like there's this difference between activation and being activated versus being energized. I mean, it's a little bit semantic, right? But I feel like something that energizes me is like, I love cephalopods. I used to have cuttlefish in my lab. I love octopuses. And by the way, it's octopuses is the plural, folks, not octopi. We'd go into a whole thing here, but I won't.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3085.965

And looking at one of those guys or gals solving a puzzle, that just energizes me in a way. I feel it in my body. It's energy that I can use for other things. It's like an inspiration for me. And there are many other things that do that. And then there are things that activate us, like where we – it's like a stress response. It's arousal, but it's negative valence. Right. It's draining.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3111.036

It's like pulling and it's taking from these things that energize us. And I feel like it's being able to notice those subtleties is hard in real time. But I feel like vitality is about the things that energize us.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3201.804

Gosh, it's so important. I hope people will listen to that a hundred times because, you know, we've heard so much about dopamine hits that I think people have lost sight of the fact that when you're online and you're just awash in all this information and videos, you're you're not getting those hits. You're in the post-dopamine hit trough.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3221.395

And we've been there for a long period of time unless we're judicious about our use of social media, an hour or three minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it is. But hours upon hours, there's no dopamine hit anymore. The peak is gone. You're in the trough. And that's why it feels kind of like, how did all that time go by? The importance of this really can't be overstated. I think that

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3243.547

We hear so much about fight or flight and the stress response that I think people forget that another component of the stress response, of drama, of being awash in all this information and movies and politics and violence and sex and all that stuff coming at us at once as we just scroll our thumbs is this thing of brachycardia.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3267.343

There's this phenomenon where when we're stressed, our heart rate actually slows down. And that's the kind of numbing and you're just kind of blanking out. And I think that's a lot of what people are starting to experience with a lot of high drama input.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3310.359

Could you go into that a little bit further?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3428.048

This idea that more words means more emotional, I don't buy it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3473.38

Well, now you have people concerned. So if a woman says to me, I didn't tell anyone. That means she only told four people.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3481.525

I don't mean secrets.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3646.874

You said it, not me. But I'll wager a theory that I think that some people, when they feel something, the kind of relief that comes from evacuating that feeling or trying to evacuate it with words feels... reflexively better to them than sitting with it internally.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3675.258

So I think people, when they feel an emotion, I think sometimes they feel like if they just talk about it or evacuate it, then it's like they get rid of it, but they forget that it has an impact.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

374.193

I had a now ex-girlfriend who we're still on great terms who we had an agreement that that served us super well and that I try and apply going forward, which is nobody tries to shift anyone else. In my mind, I was the one that came up with that, but I think in reality, she was the one that came up with it. Because now I'm like, there's no way I would have come up with that.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3799.9

I love that. I realized recently that thinking is something that we can practice. For all the tools and protocols that we talked about on this podcast and elsewhere, like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and zone two cardio and cold and all the things I realized recently, like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3836.222

like a challenge, like a life challenge, is so valuable. And I didn't come up with this on my own. I now have a practice of, like, when something feels irritating or activating, I'll just, like, stop, put everything away, and I'll just sit and think, like, what's going on here? And inevitably there's some, like, some growth in understanding at the end of that.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3858.39

But it's hard work to think like, what's going on here? Am I activated because it's true? Am I activated because it's false? Having to sort all that, you might think, well, who has the time for this? But actually, I would argue you don't have the time to not do it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

3968.638

I totally agree. And yet life happens in real time. I mean, parents with kids, they got to pick them up and they're working and there's stuff coming through on the phone. My question is, do you think nowadays there's too much communication bombardment through text, social media, phone, and real life that we've eliminated all the space?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

398.556

But I think it came about through a couple different interactions where I would get off work and sometimes like the initial 20 minutes of interacting was... much more difficult than it needed to be.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

409.816

And then I remember we just came up with this plan where we just decided no one's going to shift the other person unless they're like, shift me please, you know, like help me relax or help me get excited about this, which we would never do, right? So like when, so a policy of not trying to shift anybody or somebody trying to shift our emotions, I think felt really liberating.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4117.853

I refuse to argue over text. Yes. I just won't have an argument over text.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4211.526

When it comes to behavioral change, are you a fan of small one-degree turns? Or I'll propose an alternative, not as a counter, but just to explore next. But do you encourage your clients? Do you call them patients or clients, by the way?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4251.981

Okay. Thank you. I've always wondered about that. Do you recommend that your clients – make specific subtle changes, behavioral changes after they have an insight, or maybe even before they have an insight.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

44.443

During today's episode, we discuss how the feelings we experience when we're with certain people are the absolute best guide of how poorly or how well those people are suited for us as partners and the ways in which we miss key signals, both good and bad in relationships by not paying attention to how we feel.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4533.7

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4550.446

Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4564.472

Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4581.101

I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4596.524

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Yeah, for so many years, the field of popular psychology was obsessed with how long does it take to make a change? It was like 28 days and it was like 90.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4620.167

As somebody who studies neuroplasticity, I can tell you that There's one trial learning, you'll never go back, and there's stuff that takes years. It just depends on the intensity and the consequences, right? And even with consequences, I mean, anyone that's seen somebody relapse from drugs so many times over, clearly they're working with more complicated dynamics there.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4642.332

I think that this notion of reinforcing change is super key. I'm really glad you raised that. I want to ask, as a... I don't know how to phrase this, as a counterpoint or as an alternative. There we go. As an alternative to one-degree shifts. I'm somebody that always benefited from deadlines. I love deadlines. Like a deadline is how I get things done.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4670.304

And I just – if there's a grant deadline, a paper deadline, deadlines work. And even if you don't meet them – Um, it's great to see how far off you were, you know, if you did your absolute best and how the mistakes you made to lead to the place where you didn't complete things in time. It's just, I love deadlines and I love rules.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4691.573

And so, um, I've become a pretty strict rule enforcer for myself in my life. And I think one of the rules that's really helped me in recent times, uh, with vis-a-vis relationships has been, um, No drama, just none, like none. I don't tolerate any drama. But that's rigid, I realize, but it's helpful. I'm far happier than I've ever been, truly. in large part because of that, like no drama.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4721.512

But the thing that I had to accept with a hard rule like that is that I'm going to lose people. So earlier you said that this patient client, maybe he doesn't have to put up, maybe there's somebody better for him. There's someone else out there that they don't have to deal with. I think that one of the things that I notice in my own past and

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4742.621

with others that I know struggling with a dynamic with people, typically it's romantic relationships, but it could be anything, is you have to be willing to let go. you can't like always resolve the conflict. And I find that a lot of people, maybe it's this childhood thing. They feel like they have to like remain on great terms or they have to stay friends or they have to put a bow on it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4767.477

And I so admire the people in life that are like, yeah, that didn't work, done. Because I look at the time wasted.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4779.568

And I think that in our desire to make everything kind of okay in the end, we burn valuable life energy and incredibly valuable time. And so some people might hear like no drama and think, well, you're going to lose a bunch of people. And I will. I certainly will. Or they'll rise to the occasion or whatever you want to call it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4802.669

But I have a full life of many people with whom I have zero drama and wonderful relationships. So I'm full. My dance card's full. Right. But I'd rather... I feel so firm about this, given the peace that it's brought me, that I realized, yeah, I may never talk to that person again. I might, I might not. But at the first hint of drama, I'm done.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4828.999

And I think it's because I forced so much suffering on myself for so long of trying to resolve these things that clearly wouldn't work. And I don't know, I feel immense freedom from it. But I think I hear this with other people like, oh, yeah, but, you know, they're going to change or, you know, he's going to stop drinking or not referring to me. I'm not a drinker, but there's a hard fact.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4851.33

I quit drinking. Didn't have a problem with it. I just was like, I'm done with alcohol. Just like that relationship's over. And they just cling to this like thing that it's got like they just won't let go. Yeah. And I don't – what is that about? Why do we hold on to the thing that doesn't work even if we know we're not going to like stay with it?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4873.318

What is this obsession?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4902.377

Idiot compassion. Idiot compassion. I love that phrase. I don't even know what it means and I love it already.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4987.721

I agree, by the way. I think that my definition of drama is when challenging things are presented in a way that's not in effort to resolve.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

4996.708

Right. What I'm talking about is evacuative expression. Yeah. You know, I mean, and I'm sort of chuckling on the inside, too, about this thing about friends. I mean, I would say my group of friends is –

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5008.633

they're amazing i'm blessed with incredible friends and friendships i'm so blessed i only wish i had more time for all of them the um we're pretty hard on each other in terms of being very blunt very um like that was dumb is maybe maybe more male specific kind of language like that was dumb like why'd you do that it was super stupid or yeah don't be an idiot don't do it again or um

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5035.746

No, I totally disagree. That's a lot of the exchange in my friend group. I would say maybe it's just the culture I grew up in and academia, very little validation. Validation isn't a big part of it. But I am also surrounded by people that are very self-critical. So it's sort of inherent to the way they work.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5054.722

in their work, in their relationships, in their life, in their fitness, like pretty much everyone's pretty get after it.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5181.624

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

526.656

In which case is the best option to just pause it until somebody returns to adulthood?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5498.097

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

5931.607

Going back to this thing about texting, how many of the challenges that people present to you in your office these days incorporates or starts with, yeah, so I got this text versus, you know, somebody came to me or called me and we had a hard interaction or we had a conversation or something happened at work. I mean, how much of it is in the digital world nowadays?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6035.046

I agree. Yeah. At the same time, I feel like breakups are much harder than they used to be because you can block someone on social media, but then the block itself becomes this symbol. You can mute people. You can put your phone away, but unless you block their number, they can send you things. You can go back and read texts if you're an obsessive person.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

604.298

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6067.116

There's just so many venues, or avenues, excuse me, for people to access our psyche when we're trying to move on. In the old days, kids, you know, you had a phone with an answering machine, you broke up, it sucked, you looked at the photos, you put the photos in a box, or you burned them.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6084.525

and you put the box in a shelf, and then when you got into a new relationship, you either hid the box or you destroyed the box, and you moved on. And people's phone numbers changed, and it was so much easier. I noticed that one tended to just remember more good stuff because there wasn't other stuff coming in. The bad stuff tended to dissipate, or maybe it didn't. It was just so much easier.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

61.211

Laurie explains how to better our communication skills, how to determine if somebody's critique of us is valid or not. That certainly is important for everybody and how texting and technology has changed relationships and how to navigate all of that by leaning into our own sense of agency, the things that we can control.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6111.558

You weren't being...

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6113.416

infiltrated by the past and um you know because of the the nature of electronic stuff i just feel like it's like the past trying to like hold us back and and this is on both sides so you know it doesn't matter if the breakup was amicable then you long for the person now and again or the breakup was rough and then you like you relive element you know there's so many variants on this that um

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6137.694

I don't know. It just feels like breaking up is already one of the hardest things. People, I think, don't acknowledge just how hard breakups are.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6175.908

You know, you know, sorry. I mean, that's just people say that kind of thing. No, no, no.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

621.31

Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. how soft it is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, which will ask you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6352.45

Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

639.562

Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Now, maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress. I started sleeping on the dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6397.742

I definitely want to talk about grief. Before we do that, I'd like to kind of double click into this breakup thing. In my observation and experience, one of the hardest things about breakups is this idea that we want to somehow come to a

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6417.711

common narrative and there seems to be a lot of um desire to kind of understand where the other the other person's experience of of what happened um and a very i don't i don't think it's intentional but i think people can be somewhat um destructive in a breakup by um changing the whole this notion like the like it was all an illusion or something or you know where you know i mean i i guess i've had enough relationships and breakups to realize that

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6448.558

You know, there's love that continues. There's things that you thought were love that weren't. I mean, there's love that doesn't continue and there's all sorts of shapes and forms of this stuff, but that like good, well-meaning people that take divergent paths

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6468.474

i've learned it doesn't mean that um anything else sometimes it literally just means that right there isn't a need to rewrite the script like it wasn't what i thought it actually was what i thought and then it was something different or it just circumstances changed or things changed i'm not trying to make light of this i mean i i would argue i'm

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6489.496

probably one of the least skilled people at breakups, although I've gotten quote unquote better at it, it's always super painful. Like I've never had a breakup that didn't really hurt. It doesn't matter if I left or they left, that just didn't really hurt.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6504.228

And I think it's this idea of like, and this is why I think it's an interesting, perhaps segue to grief is that it's almost like as something ends, we look back and we evaluate the story and try and figure out, was that real? Was it not real? How could that have been real? And then we're here, right? There was all this hope and expectation. Yeah, I think about this a lot.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

656.873

So much so that when I travel and I'm not on my dusk mattress, I really miss it. And when I get home, I just find that I sleep so much better because of that mattress. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman. Take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

673.983

Right now, Helix is giving up to 20% off on all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6789.825

Or we were both great and it just didn't work out.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6793.347

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6804.252

I always find I miss the person's smell.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6811.974

I think that takes the longest.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6814.695

I have a really good audio memory too. I can close my eyes. I've been able to do this since I was a kid and hear people's voices. But smells, I think we come to expect them. And then we don't notice they're there. And then the person's gone. And then we're like, it smells different here.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6910.168

I'm always struck by how people talk about their partners when their partners aren't around.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6917.191

The other day, this kid came up to me in the gym, Kid. He was probably in his 30s, but there I go again. He was a podcast fan. We were just chatting. I like to ask people, like, what do you do? He's in tech, I think. I don't recall. And it's like, where are you from? And he's like, he's from Brazil. Cool. And then we were talking about something. He said, you know, my girlfriend.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6940.094

And then we got into some discussion about travel in South America or something. And then at one point he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like my flower. And the way he said it, I was like, wow, that's beautiful. Again, I'm half Latin. But I haven't heard that enough. And I was like, wow. And I said, that's amazing that you just referred to her as a flower.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

695.41

It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6961.294

He goes, yes, she's like the flower in my life. And I was like, wow. You don't hear that that often. I also don't get into conversations like this very often. But somehow he just shared that spontaneously. And she wasn't there to hear it. I can't remember the guy's name. Forgive me. Um, she'll never know that I, that he referred to her that way, but it was really beautiful.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

6984.736

And there are certain people, um, like I heard Rogan one day talking about his wife on a podcast. He was like, she's just so nice. Like he just, the appreciation he has for her in the, in the, in the small details of how he refers to her. Um, and those are just two examples. And then I could give a bunch of negative examples about people, uh,

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7007.332

Gosh, I don't want to put it on one or the other side of the male-female dynamic. But when people say like, oh, yeah, like they're a pain in my ass or like referring to people as their old lady or their old man, like that's an interesting but kind of in my mind not the sweetest way. Maybe it could be. Maybe it depends on the tone.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7026.777

Anyway, I'm casting a lot of shadows and light where perhaps I shouldn't. But that interaction was delightful. And I thought awesome for him and awesome for her.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

710.621

Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights, insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course, also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7176.954

there's a saying from 12 step, which is identify, don't compare, which is like, cause you'll hear people outside of 12 step talking about, for instance, you know, like, you know, well, he's this, this and this and ambitious and this and that, but he's like kind of emotionally unavailable, but he's more available. And people will talk about male or female partners, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7203.052

or potential partners, or people that they're dating, as if you could kludge together the best of all people and get this perfect tapestry of the person that's got all the features you want. Because, yeah, some people are a little more easygoing, lighthearted, and sometimes, not always, less ambitious. Those things, in my experience, tend to correlate. Not always.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7222.844

Some people are super hard-driving. They get it done. And they have the capacity to be immense providers, but they have less time and sometimes they're not as emotionally available. Again, stereotyping like crazy here.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7235.834

But people get this idea that they're sort of like – through the comparison, they can arrive at the perfect person when, in fact, I think appreciation not being Teflon about the positive stuff comes from kind of shutting out the idea that there's an alternative. But, of course, you don't want to end up in a situation where the person is – you know, not truly not good for you, right? Well, right.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7257.628

That's not what I'm talking about. Right. And I don't think you are. But yeah, with that caveat, I think that accepting that people are complicated and there is no kludging together of people. At some point you make a choice.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

727.945

Better help makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7375.657

I feel like placing one's attention on the good things as much as possible and really letting those fill us up as much as possible is really key. I didn't say this, I borrowed this, but that two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only. This idea like if only this, because for two reasons. One is it's very unlikely that if only comes true.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7402.657

But the other one is it takes our attention away from seeing what's there.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

742.073

If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7433.188

Yeah, I think this notion of attention and appreciation just seems so fundamental.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7490.745

What I love about what's coming through here is that you emphasize the role of these unconscious processes. We default to people that aren't healthy for us sometimes, not always. And yet you also emphasize that we have a lot of agency. These days, it seems like There's a default toward looking outward.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

751.929

One thing that I've observed, I don't have any formal data on this, is that some of the happiest couples I know are couples where I would refer to one person in the relationship as more emotive and expressive and the other person as a little bit on the spectrum. And my observation is that part of the reason those couples seem so harmonious is that the little things don't seem to bother the

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7512.255

For all that's been said about meditation and reflection and journaling on this podcast and others, we all know these tools are available. They basically just take time. I mean, with meditation, you don't even need a pen and paper. But we tend to look outward for answers. Do you ever give homework to your patients to just like think or journal or is there work tend to be more behavioral?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7596.868

Do you ever tell people whenever you think that, just do the opposite?

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7717.329

There's a great line in that movie, High Fidelity, based on the Nick Hornsby novel, which I also highly recommend, where he's like, you know, people tell me that We should listen to our gut. Well, after 30 years, I've come to the conclusion that my gut has shit for brains. That's right.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7733.647

You know, he's just realizing that his reflex on what to do with, you know, his relationship life is completely off. Some people will hear what we're talking about right now and will say, yeah, but I My gut also tells me when I'm in danger. We're obviously not talking about when you can sense danger.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

777.998

person on the spectrum because they don't register them they don't get entangled in the other person's um downs or or ups which i guess um could be problematic in theory but just seems like they get along really well because and i won't you know kind of stereotype the labels but these these couples that i know it does happen to be the male who is um

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

78.664

And last but not least, Laurie explains how we can all access more vitality and enjoyment of life and how so many people don't allow themselves to do that because the familiarity of their present circumstances overrides their willingness to move forward.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7813.17

I, um, completely agree. Uh, I also, in my life, I've had the experience of I've taken big risks with my career multiple times and it's always worked out. Thank goodness. A lot of my teen years and twenties and thirties were, were spent, um, learning to overcome the adrenaline response.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7835.871

And I learned to take progressively more and more risk and ended up having an air failure, scuba diving, cage exit diving with great white sharks. I don't say this to sound tough. I say this because it's like, what was I thinking? I took it too far. So I think learning to overcome the adrenaline response. and be calm and adrenaline I think has its value.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7859.661

I also took tremendous risk in my personal life getting involved with people I never should have gotten involved with. And I blame myself, I don't blame them, right? I mean, I was in choice. So I can imagine that some people are so averse to danger that they don't put themselves into circumstances in which they could really come to thrive.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7877.923

And some people are just wired to go into the fire to the point where it's destructive, either with physical pursuits or in romantic relationships. You know, I'll take it outside my own story. I mean, I have a friend, a dear friend who, you know, was in like an incredibly physically abusive relationship, number 12.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7902.419

And she eventually came to the conclusion that her threat sensing threshold was just way too high. Did some really good work to understand why that was and realized that her fear response didn't kick in until it was like a nine alarm fire.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

7918.404

And so, you know, she needed to listen to that, as you mentioned, that like super quiet whisper early on. because anyone else who didn't have her history, which is sadly a very, very challenging history in her family, would have immediately been like, yeah, I'm out. But she was like, this is normal.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

804.966

a little bit on the spectrum and the woman who's a little more emotive. And it just seems like there's so much harmony there. And when I talk to him, I'm generally closer to the man in the relationship, although not always. They say like, yeah, like, you know, it doesn't bother me. I just like will listen or if there's something to request, I'll respond to the request.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

8122.199

Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

828.683

There isn't this entanglement of she's upset, so I like have to respond or this is really painful to listen to. It's more of like a kind of matter of fact.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

8295.472

Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

840.334

And I just think it's an interesting dynamic. It's obviously not one that people can pre-program themselves for. But I do think it's an interesting dynamic as opposed to what you're describing where emotions can kind of ratchet together like gears.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

8406.878

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Huberman Lab

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

855.743

And that can be wonderful when people are in ecstatic states or happy or that there's like the banter of certain couples that seem pretty emotive is something I'm also familiar with observing. But Those couples also seem like more volatile, like when somebody is upset, the other person gets upset that they're – and it just starts to deteriorate pretty quickly.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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In your adult clients, how much of the struggle that you hear about in terms of romantic relationships relates to, again, online aspects like apps and things like that? Do you think they facilitated things or made them relationships more challenging?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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It's all opportunity cost for them.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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What a great exercise.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Do you think that... after people make that list that they might take a look at that list and make some effort to reduce or eliminate some things from that list? Is that good self-work? Like if somebody is super rigid about punctuality, anyone that knows me clearly, that's not me. Like, I know some people that are so rigid about that.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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This was a really eye opening episode and one that I'm certain will help you better understand yourself and what your needs really are and how you can be happier in or out of a relationship. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Let's say someone identifies that as one of the things that can be really difficult. Like, they get really upset if somebody's five minutes late. I've interacted with these people. You're very difficult to be around. As an academic, everything starts 10 minutes late. We end late. That's how it works. should they try to resolve that or reduce that feature?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Or should they look at the list and say, you know what? Like, I'm not gonna change that. I mean, this thing, well, I should probably change that. What else can the list do for people?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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weaving this with what we were talking about earlier about gut sense and the validity or lack of validity of gut sense. I certainly have had the experience and I know many other people have that after a relationship ends or when it's ending, they think back and they go, you know, there was that thing at the beginning and I knew it then, but I pushed it aside.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Like, is that just a story we tell ourselves?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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So I just want to make sure I understand. So we're talking about two different lists here. One is a list of features about the other person. This is what we hear as like the list. The number of times that friends are like, you have to make a list. I'll never get around to making a list.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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But I like this other list that you described, which is all the things about ourselves that would make us difficult to be with. Which list or both do we need to have rigidity versus flexibility?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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I love, love, love the criteria, for lack of a better word, of, you know, how do I feel when I'm around this person?

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Peace being an anchor point or a place to look for.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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There's so much made of these love languages, like they're acts of service and I like, you know, gifts, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, I've I've heard it said, you know, what's your love language? And someone, you know, all of them, you know, that person was me. All of them. Who doesn't like all of those, you know? You know, I like to think I offer them too, you know.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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You know, who doesn't like all of those things? But I realize that some people place more value on certain gestures and expressions. And I think that's all fine and good. What I love about what you're saying, however, is that It's more of like a, now we're sounding woo, but it's more of like an energetic match. This feeling of safety.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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You know, the word peace to me just holds so much value these days. I feel like the two things that I've come to really value more and more are peace and self-respect. Because it's hard to have peace without self-respect.

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How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

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Certainly hard to have self-respect without peace. Now, sometimes lack of peace can be from external things, but then we have to ask ourselves, like, do we have any control over these external things? Yeah, I'm curious what your reflections are on like an energy match.

Huberman Lab

How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

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However, the answer isn't entirely arousal, meaning not all of the positive effects of exercise on brain health, longevity, and performance can be explained by arousal. But when I step back from the literature, again, an enormous literature, tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers, many of which are done exceptionally well, by the way, as well as meta-analyses and reviews,

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I think it's fair to say that probably 60 to 70% of the effects of exercise on brain health, performance, and longevity can be explained by the specific shifts in our physiology, both bodily physiology and directly within the brain's physiology during those bouts of exercise, which is this increase in so-called autonomic arousal, which occurs during the exercise, but also

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extends into a window after the exercise is completed. So we have to talk about this relationship between exercise arousal and acute brain performance, meaning the improvements in brain performance that happen immediately after the exercise. And then we'll shift our focus to the effects of exercise that occur more chronically.

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So the goal of today's episode is to synthesize that vast amount of information into a logical framework that simplifies it and clarifies it and places it within the context of specific mechanisms, both neurobiological mechanisms and endocrine-based mechanisms that together

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That is the effects of exercise on brain health and performance that occur in the hours, days, weeks, and years after we exercise, even if we are continuing to exercise every day or three times a week or whatever the frequency might be. But this issue of arousal is extremely important and I assure you it's not trivial.

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In fact, it will help you understand a number of things in the domains of deliberate cold exposure, stress, trauma, and most importantly for today's discussion, it will help you design an exercise program that's geared towards giving you the maximum bodily health effects and the maximum brain health effects.

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Okay, in order to understand the relationship between exercise, arousal, and learning, we have to really clarify the relationship between arousal and learning. That's gonna set the stage for pretty much everything else we're gonna talk about for the next 10 minutes or so. And it's oh so cool.

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It also gives me the opportunity to review a paper that I've long loved, which comes from Larry Cahill's group down at UC Irvine entitled Enhanced Memory Consolidation with Post-Learning Stress, Interaction with the Degree of Arousal at Encoding. This is just one of several papers from the Cahill group, which essentially identified the following.

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There are a couple of different ways you can increase so-called autonomic arousal or levels of alertness.

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Sometimes it's called stress, but autonomic arousal is simply an increase in the amount of activity in the so-called sympathetic arm or the autonomic nervous system, which is nerd speak for more alert, more aroused, wide-eyed, ready to move, higher heart rate, higher blood pressure, more alertness.

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This is a great state to be in for learning material, provided it's not too much alertness, too much arousal. Turns out this paper shows it's also a great state to be in after you've been exposed to material that you want to learn.

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And it's also the case that in this paper and in many, many other papers from this and other laboratories, that you can increase levels of autonomic arousal by having people put their arm into ice water for one to three minutes, the so-called cold presser test. It's a very commonly used standard test.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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This paper and many other papers show that it leads to very rapid and significant increases in circulating levels of cortisol, which yes, sometimes is called a stress hormone, but it's really just a hormone involved in the stress response, but does a bunch of other things too. So they use that as a tool after people have been exposed to certain types of information to ask,

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Does elevation in cortisol, AKA autonomic arousal, improve one's ability to remember information? And the answer is yes. This study shows that. Several other studies from the Cahill and other laboratories show that. Sometimes those studies use people putting their arm into ice cold water.

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can very well explain the data on how exercise impacts brain health and longevity, such that by the end of today's episode, you'll have both some specific recommendations about how to use exercise for sake of brain health and performance that I believe will be new to most of you, as well as the ability to think about the mechanisms and the logical framework that wraps around this incredibly large literature on exercise and brain performance so that you can customize your exercise program on the basis of how much time you have available,

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Other times they'll inject them with a drug that increases adrenaline, also called epinephrine, sometimes also increases cortisol. The point being that elevations in autonomic arousal, after one is exposed to information, increases one's memory for that information and one's memory for the details of that information.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Now, in this particular study, they compared emotionally-laden versus non-emotionally-laden information and a bunch of other details, which are interesting if you choose to peruse this study. But I should mention that other studies from this and other laboratories have shown time and time again

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increases in autonomic arousal measured by increases in cortisol or adrenaline, also called epinephrine, or norepinephrine, which is the sort of analog within the brain that consistently leads to better memory for information that one has been exposed to,

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better memory for the details of that information, and oftentimes better ability to work with that information, to come up with new ideas with that information, or to think logically about that information in new ways. In other words, increasing autonomic arousal improves learning and memory.

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Now, it's also very important to understand that that increase in autonomic arousal can improve learning and memory. If the autonomic arousal occurs after the exposure to the material, most people find that a bit surprising. I certainly did when I first read this paper. It makes sense if you start to think about the persistence of memories for things like traumas or bad events, right?

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Bad event happens and there's this big spike in cortisol and adrenaline, and those memories are hard to eradicate. They're certainly hard to remove the emotional content from. And if you think about it, In those instances, the event happens and then comes the big increase in cortisol and adrenaline. So that maps very well onto the study that I'm describing here.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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In addition, however, lots of studies have shown that increasing autonomic arousal as measured by increases in adrenaline or cortisol or both or any number of different measures of autonomic arousal that occurs during the exposure to the new material. Okay, so this isn't trauma.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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This is like new math material, new history material, new music material, new motor skill material that you're trying to learn. increases in autonomic arousal that occur as you're trying to so-called encode the information, you're being exposed to that new information, also significantly improve learning. And it's always through increases in arousal.

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In other words, whether or not you're measuring cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, how wide someone's pupils are, or small someone's pupils are,

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or any combination of those things or any other measures of autonomic arousal, the consistent takeaway is increases in arousal during or after, in particular after, trying to learn a certain material is going to improve significantly the amount of material that one learns, the details of that material, and the persistence of that learning over time.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein, and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Today, we are discussing exercise and brain health, which includes brain longevity and brain performance, our ability to learn new information over long periods of time and indeed into old age. Today, we are going to discuss how different forms of exercise,

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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your specific age, your health status, and the specific types of brain changes that you might be seeking through the use of exercise.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one, And I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home, or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David Barr in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I wanna bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Okay, so now we've established that elevated levels of autonomic arousal, either during or after, and indeed also before a bout of learning, the so-called encoding phase of learning, when we're exposed to the new material that we want to learn and remember, are all beneficial. This is wonderful news.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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When we look out on the whole of the literature on the relationship between exercise and brain health and performance, we see studies that incorporate exercise either before or after a bout of learning.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And I should also say that by learning how exercise impacts brain performance and brain health, you're also going to learn some of the incredible ways that your body communicates with your brain and your brain communicates with your body, not just during exercise, but all of the time. So today you're going to learn a lot of practical tools, of course, about exercise, brain health, and longevity.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And we also find studies, believe it or not, that combine exercise with learning in real time, literally exposing people to new material that they're expected to learn or trying to learn while they're walking on a treadmill or running on a treadmill or cycling or rowing. Yes, those studies have also been done. Although for practical reasons, they're not as,

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Numerous as the study is exploring the relationship between exercise and learning where the exercise is done before or after the bout of learning. Okay, so what this means is wonderful. What this means is that if you want to use exercise, not just for enhancing your bodily health, but also for brain health and performance, you can do that exercise before, during, or after bouts of learning.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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That allows you to look at the constraints of your life. For instance, are you one of these people that can get up at five or six or 7 a.m. and exercise before everyone else gets up or before your workday starts or your school day starts, do a round of exercise and then get into your bouts of learning, whatever that material may be?

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Or are you somebody who has to dive into the workday, school day, family obligations, et cetera, in which case you might only be able to exercise later in the day, but you're probably still somebody who would like to enhance their brain health and performance.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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So in that case, you might organize the thing that you're trying to learn, the encoding or the exposure to the thing that you're trying to learn, either in written forms or you're reading or you're listening to it or you're attending a class or classes, and then exercising after you're exposed to that material in order to get that elevated levels of arousal, not unlike the arrangement of the studies that I was talking about earlier, which used the ice exposure,

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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in order to generate increases in arousal and thereby to improve learning and memory. So in the show note captions for this episode, we've batched a number of different references that have explored the relationship between exercise and cognitive performance.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And across those studies and the ones that are referenced therein, you'll find studies where the exercise bout was done before, where the exercise bout was done during, where the exercise bout was done after a round of learning or encoding of information. And I should mention that different studies focus on different cognitive tasks.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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So exercise and the arousal associated with exercise has been shown to acutely improve recall, so just raw recall of material, the details in material. It's been shown to improve cognitive flexibility through things like the Stroop task. And so in a very convenient way, exercise has been shown to acutely improve performance on all those sorts of brain and memory tasks, which is

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Greatly reassuring to all of us because what it means is that it probably doesn't matter so much when you do your exercise or what it is that you're trying to learn. It's going to be beneficial as long as the thing that you're trying to learn and the exercise are positioned fairly closely in time.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Now, the one caveat to that is that several studies have explored the relationship between short duration, high intensity interval training and cognitive performance. In particular, executive function, that cognitive prefrontal flexibility that we were talking about a few moments ago. And on the whole, all of those studies point to improvements in executive control and function.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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It's based on research that is incredibly interesting, in some cases surprising, and in almost all cases, actionable. As some of you may already know, I have a book coming out this year, 2025, entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. I'm super excited about the book.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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So that context dependent switching of knowledge and your ability to think about things in a very agile way, if you will. If people did a high intensity interval training session just before they do that bout of cognitive flexibility learning.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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However, several studies have also looked at the effect of repeated bouts of high-intensity interval training, and in some cases, looking at the mechanisms by which high-intensity interval training improve cognitive performance.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And the basic takeaway is the following, and again, I'll provide references to these in the show note captions, that high-intensity interval training done before, or believe it or not, even during cognitive flexibility tasks, a couple of studies have actually explored that, significantly improves performance on those tasks.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Again, we believe this is likely through enhanced levels of arousal, although some data also point to the fact that it's also likely through enhanced cerebral blood flow, simply more blood being delivered to the brain during, or in particular, after high intensity interval training.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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More blood, more fuel, and other molecules being delivered to the brain during a cognitive task or cognitive flexibility task makes sense why that would improve cognitive function. And yet when studies have explored the consequence of doing multiple high intensity interval training sessions. And when I say high intensity, I mean high intensity. These are studies where lactate is elevated.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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We'll talk more about lactate in a few minutes.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Where typically people's heart rate is either close to or at their maximum heart rate for some period of time, either 30 seconds, 60 seconds, two minutes, or in some cases, people are pushing really, really hard for four minutes, then resting for four minutes, then pushing really hard for four minutes, then resting for four minutes, four times over the so-called four by four program that I know a number of you have heard about.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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If you haven't, it's very intense. So you can imagine all out for four minutes, then rest, all out for four minutes, then rest. Doing that several times in a day, okay, so two bouts of four by four or two high intensity interval training sessions of any kind has been shown to diminish cognitive performance if the cognitive task comes after the second high intensity interval training session.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Now, for most of us, including me, that makes sense. You think, well, they're tired. People aren't able to focus as much because they're devoting all this energy to the exercise. And indeed, that's true, although the mechanism is interesting.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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The studies that have looked at this have actually found that cerebral blood flow during the two bouts of high-intensity interval training are more or less equal. So it's not that the first session necessarily precludes

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high performance in the high intensity interval training session in the second session, but then when you go on to try and do a cognitive task that's demanding and also requires elevated levels of cerebral blood flow, you find that performance drops, and this is correlated with reductions in cerebral blood flow that come from doing too much high intensity interval training.

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It includes protocols, that is actionable steps that anyone can take to improve their sleep, motivation, creativity, gut microbiome, nutrition, exercise, stress modulation, and much more. Now, the book was originally scheduled to be released in April of 2025. However, to make sure that the book reflects the latest scientific research,

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Now, I have to acknowledge that most people aren't doing multiple high intensity interval training sessions per day, but this is a reminder, an important reminder, in fact,

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that if you're using exercise to try and improve brain health and function, or even if you're just somebody who's exercising but is also expected to use their brain to learn things throughout the day, as most of us are, and to attend to things throughout the day, you need to be cautious about not overdoing the high intensity interval training sessions. This is also true for resistance training.

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You need to be aware that very high intensity exercise, yes, increases cerebral blood flow and the delivery of all these fuels and other compounds to your brain during the exercise, If you do that correctly and you don't overdo it, you can capture some of that wave of blood flow, fuel, et cetera, as you enter the learning session.

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But if you quote unquote overdo it, then you're going to arrive to that bout of learning with reduced cerebral blood flow. and you're going to be in a state that it's very difficult to focus and learn new information. So there is such a thing as too much arousal from exercise that leads to troughs in arousal that diminish cognitive performance and learning.

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Now, all of this is focused, of course, on the relationship between exercise and brain function at the acute level, the immediate level. It's fair to say that all high intensity exercise and resistance training is going to support brain function in the chronic sense, in the long-term sense. In fact, the literature points to that.

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And once again, I've batched the references for this episode so that they're grouped together according to the specific topics and timestamps.

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And the two studies that I recommend you look at if you're interested in this relationship between high intensity training and cognitive function, in particular executive function, that cognitive flexibility I was talking about earlier, such as in the Stroop task, There's a wonderful article entitled Executive Function After Exhaustive Exercise. That's one to look at.

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And the other one, which I think is really nice, and therefore I've placed there, really points to the way that a single bout of exercise can acutely improve brain function, in particular executive function. And the title of that paper, not surprisingly, is A Single Bout of Resistance Exercise Can Enhance Episodic Memory Performance. Here's a fun one.

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As I continue to hammer on this thesis that so many of the positive effects of exercise on brain health and performance, at least in the acute sense, immediately after the exercise, in some cases during the exercise, are due to arousal.

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Well, then it should make sense why things like so-called exercise snacks, this idea that throughout the day, you suddenly do 25 quick jumping jacks, or you jump up and down five times, or you do 20 air squats. We've heard about exercise snacks in different contexts, such as adjusting blood glucose levels. You hear a lot about that. After meals, take a walk or

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do some jumping jacks really quick, or do 20 air squats throughout the day. And people talk about the sort of outsized positive effects of those. Well, check this out. When it comes to high intensity interval training and positive effects on cognitive performance, there's a study entitled The Influence of Acute Sprint Interval Training on Cognitive Performance in Healthy Younger Adults.

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I've decided to expand on the yes, already finished version of the book to make sure that the protocols are as up-to-date as possible and reflect the most modern and best findings. So the new release date for protocols is going to be September of 2025. I do apologize for the delay in release, but I assure you that I will make it worth your wait.

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And this study has people do six second all out efforts. You heard that right, six seconds. So six seconds, it always is tricky. They always use the same numbers, the four by four by four. Okay, six, yes, the number six, six second all out efforts, sprinting on basically a stationary bike, and then a period of rest of one minute between those six second

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all out efforts and they see a significant improvement in cognitive performance. So yes, it's true that you can do very brief, very intense bouts of exercise. I mean, just think about six seconds of sprinting, one minute of just cruise or rest, six seconds, and then just repeat for six sprints total of six seconds each and experience an enhancement that is an acute

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or immediate enhancement in cognitive function. And I can imagine no other mechanistic explanation for that aside from increased levels of autonomic arousal. Any other mechanism that you could envision, IGF-1, irisin, BDNF, things that we'll talk about in a few minutes,

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Yes, those might be deployed as well, but in terms of seeing something so brief, having such a fast action on cognitive performance, and given what you now know about the relationship between arousal focus and cognitive performance, I'd be willing to stake, let's say, six of my 10 fingers on the idea that it's all due to enhanced autonomic arousal.

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Okay, let's talk for a few minutes about the mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and performance. And I realize when I say mechanisms, some of you may say, okay, well, I just want to know what to do.

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I don't need to hear about the mechanisms, but in this case, understanding just a little bit about the pathways by which exercise impacts the brain can give you a ton of leverage in designing the best exercise schedule for your brain health and performance, and frankly, for your exercise schedule generally

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to generate things like fat loss, improvements in strength, hypertrophy, endurance, and so on. In fact, let's do this mental experiment together. If we were to ask ourselves, how is it that exercise improves brain health and performance? Based on what you know now, you'd probably say, well, it increases arousal, the catecholamines, so dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine.

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It probably increases heart rate, so more blood pumping to the brain, and so on and so forth. And you would be correct about all of that. But let's just think a little bit more deeply about how exercise actually impacts the brain in the short and long term and ask ourselves, what are the different physical pathways?

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What are the different chemical pathways by which the movement of our body changes the way that our brain works in the short and long term? So if we were to draw a stick figure of a human and orient ourselves to the different locations or organs in the body that contain potential sources of information for the brain, One place that we could start would be, of course, the heart.

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When you do cardiovascular exercise of any kind, intense or not so intense, short or long, your heart rate increases, your blood pressure increases. Likewise, if you do resistance training, there will be heart rate increases. Those heart rate increases will come down between sets, but your heart rate tends to increase when you exercise. That's sort of a duh.

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To learn more about the book or to secure a copy by presale, go to protocolsbook.com. There you'll find all the information about the book, as well as the various languages that the book will be translated into. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

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Well, when your heart rate increases, there's actually both increased blood flow to the brain and the delivery of all the things that that blood carries, but there are also neural pathways that carry signals about that heart rate, about those blood pressure changes to the brain in order to increase our levels of alertness and focus that we can leverage toward learning.

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So the first location in the body that we know can communicate with the brain is the heart. When our heart beats faster, that's communicated to our autonomic nervous system, which resides in a number of different brain areas. In fact, it's a network of brain areas that act in concert to create what we call autonomic arousal.

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We also have another pathway that goes back from the brain to the heart and other organs that we call the vagus nerve, which is a two directional pathway, up from the body to the brain and from the brain back to the body. We're going to talk a lot about the vagus. In fact, let's talk about the vagus now.

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When we exercise, we release adrenaline, which is also called epinephrine, from our adrenal glands, which are small glands that reside atop both of our kidneys. That adrenaline or epinephrine, as it's also called, does many things in our body. It's responsible for increasing our heart rate further.

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It's responsible for a number of effects on the so-called endothelial cells that make up the vessels and capillaries. and it has impacts on the neurons in our body that create all sorts of changes in the way that blood flows, how fast it flows, and so on and so forth. Now, here's a key thing to understand. Adrenaline, epinephrine, does not cross the blood-brain barrier.

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So the adrenaline from our adrenals doesn't actually get into the brain to stimulate elevated levels of alertness. Rather, it acts on receptors on the vagus nerve. Again, the vagus nerve communicates with the brain, and also in the vagus nerve, certain brain areas communicate with the body.

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So adrenaline has a lot of effects within the body, but when it's released, it also acts on so-called adrenergic receptors on the vagus nerve. Then the vagus nerve is activated in a way that stimulates the activity of a brain area, because remember, the vagus goes from the body into the brain. stimulates the so-called NST.

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And because neuroanatomists like to argue about naming, sometimes it'll also be called the NTS, the nucleus of the solitary tract or the nucleus tractus solitaris. Super annoying, I know. Forget the acronym unless you want to know that it's sometimes NST and sometimes it's NTS. Don't ask me why neuroanatomists do this.

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In any case, the NST can then communicate with a really important brain area whose name you should remember, which is the locus coeruleus. The locus coeruleus contains neurons that release, among other things, norepinephrine, which is similar in action to epinephrine, but different.

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Neurons in the locus coeruleus send those little wires that we call axons into the brain in a very widespread manner. It's almost as if they're positioned to sprinkler the brain with a neurochemical and that neurochemical is norepinephrine. They also have the capacity to release other neurochemicals, but right now we're concentrating on norepinephrine.

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It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

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When norepinephrine is released from the locus coeruleus, it has this tendency to elevate the levels of activity in other brain areas through this sort of sprinkler-like mechanism. What that means is that other areas of the brain, such as your prefrontal cortex, such as your hippocampus,

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such as different areas of the hypothalamus and indeed lots of brain circuits, all have a greater capacity to be engaged. This is what we're talking about when we talk about autonomic arousal. Release of adrenaline from the adrenals that has action within the body, elevated heart rate, blood pressure, et cetera,

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And then adrenaline also from the adrenals to the vagus, from the vagus to the NST, NST to locus coeruleus, and then locus coeruleus sprinklers the brain with this norepinephrine, raising the levels of baseline activity in all those brain areas and making them more likely to be engaged by things that we're trying to attend to, more likely to engage, say, the neurons of the prefrontal cortex that can learn context-dependent strategy switching, such as in a Stroop task.

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or when we're trying to attend to information and we go, okay, here's something important. I need to pay attention to this. We're able to do that because of that elevated level of norepinephrine. It facilitates, it's permissive for elevating our levels of attention and focus.

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It's also permissive for our hippocampus to encode new memories and for a bunch of other brain areas to do their thing, so to speak. So knowing these mechanisms is actually worthwhile. If you've ever heard that exercise can give you energy, this is the basis of that statement.

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Many people, in fact, myself for many years thought, okay, I definitely have to sleep well in order to have energy and focus. That's absolutely true, still true, will always be true. I should maybe have some caffeine, be hydrated, well-nourished, all this stuff in order to have the energy to exercise. But it's also true that exercise gives us energy and this is how it gives us energy.

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When we move our body, the adrenals release adrenaline and the adrenaline acts through two different so-called parallel pathways. within the body, but again, it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier.

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So then there's a series of what we call signaling relays or circuit relays up to the locus coeruleus, and then a sort of analog, it's different, but an analog to epinephrine, norepinephrine is released within the brain. And lo and behold, we have elevated levels of both bodily energy and brain energy and focus that we can devote to that exercise, but also

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to the learning that comes after that exercise, which explains pretty much everything that we've talked about up until now during the course of this podcast. So the next time you're feeling a little tired and you don't wanna work out, remember, exercise gives you energy through the pathways that I just described. Now, anytime I talk about the adrenals, people start talking about adrenal burnout.

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You burn out your adrenals. There are these crazy theories that you'll hear out there. Coffee burns out your adrenals. Not true. You'll hear that if you exercise too much, it might burn out your energy or your adrenals.

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Look, you have enough capacity within your adrenals to survive relatively long famines, to survive long bouts of challenge, stress of many, many different kinds, short challenges, and so on. you're not going to burn out your adrenals. There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome, which is a real syndrome. There are diseases of the adrenals, but that's not what we're referring to here.

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Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides.

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You have plenty of adrenaline in your adrenals that you can deploy through movement, through exercise to get the elevation and arousal attention and so forth that we've been talking about.

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In fact, there's a set of biological pathways that were just recently discovered that will allow you to understand how to use movement in order to engage your adrenals so that then those adrenals can release adrenaline, impact your vagus, impact the organs of your body, the locus coeruleus, and elevate your levels of attention and focus.

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And a lot of the core components of these pathways are highlighted in a paper that I absolutely love, another paper I absolutely love, This is from Peter Strick's laboratory at University of Pittsburgh, which is entitled, The Mind-Body Problem. Circuits that link the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla. The adrenal medulla are those adrenals that I've been referring to in the body.

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And the question that Peter Strick and colleagues asked was how is it that movement actually gets the adrenals to release adrenaline? Like what's the signal? Does it come from the muscles? Does it come from the skeleton? It's perfectly reasonable to assume that there are signals that come from the muscles and from the skeleton that cause the adrenals to release adrenaline when we exercise.

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But what Strick and colleagues did was actually super clever. They took some new tools that had just become available. These are tools that allow the tracing of neural circuits from organs in the body all the way back up to the brain, or from one brain structure to another brain structure, and then to yet another brain structure.

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We don't have time to go into all the technical details, but this is a technique that perhaps I'll talk about on a future podcast. It's one that my laboratory used for a number of years to trace other neural pathways.

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What they discovered is that there are essentially three categories of brain areas, all of which communicate with the adrenals and can cause them to release adrenaline to create this elevation and arousal and attention.

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Those three brain areas include areas of the brain that are involved in thinking, what we call cognition, areas of the brain that are related to what are called affective states, which is just kind of a more general category that includes emotions.

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First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the do's and the not to do's. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise.

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Okay, if you saw the Huberman Lab podcast episode that I did with Lisa Feldman Barrett, she explains beautifully the distinction between affective states and emotions, but these are brain areas that basically relate to what we are feeling. or how we're perceiving our environment and how we're reacting to it, these sorts of things.

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And then there's a third category of brain areas that most robustly communicates with the adrenals. And these are a collection of brain areas that are all involved with movement of particular areas of our body. These areas are broadly referred to as the motor network. So these are areas of the so-called cerebral cortex, which are on the outer portion of the brain.

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And they send these wires down the spinal cord. There's a little relay in the spinal cord It's called the IML. If you're interested in the anatomical details, I'll put the link to this paper in the show note captions. In any case, these brain areas that are involved in motor movement send axons, those wires, down to the spinal cord.

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Then from the spinal cord, they send a relay out via what's called the cholinergic preganglionic neurons. Basically what ends up happening is that acetylcholine, which is a neuromodulator, is released from these neurons that originate in the spinal cord. onto the adrenal medulla, and then the adrenal medulla, the so-called adrenals, same thing, adrenal medulla, adrenals, releases adrenaline.

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That creates these effects in the body on the heart, the muscles, and other tissues. And then as described before, that adrenaline also acts on the vagus, the vagus up to the NST, the locus coeruleus, and we have this elevation and alertness.

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So this paper and papers that came subsequent to it really explain how it is that the movement of our body, AKA exercise, allows us to have this elevation in arousal and alertness. It's a loop, okay? The adrenals release adrenaline. They do these things by these two parallel pathways I've been talking about.

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But your decision to engage these motor areas, to move particular areas of your body is what deploys that adrenaline. Now you might be thinking, well, duh, When I exercise, there's adrenaline release. In order to exercise, I need to move my body. And these brain areas control the movement of my body. But it's not a duh.

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It's actually very profound because it turns out that the specific brain areas that best activate the adrenals

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are the brain areas that control the muscles closest to the midline, the core musculature, and the brain areas that are involved in generating the sorts of movements that we would call compound movements, at least in the context of resistance training, or that are responsible for moving multiple joints at the same time.

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So what this means in the practical sense is if you are feeling sluggish, you want energy, or you're simply exercising both for bodily effects and for brain effects, you need the deployment of adrenaline, of epinephrine. You need the deployment of norepinephrine in the brain.

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And by the way, anytime you have a deployment of norepinephrine in the brain, almost always there's a coordinated action of release of dopamine, which most people have heard of by now. Dopamine is involved in motivation as well as movement, et cetera.

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So the simple takeaway here is if you want to get the arousal that comes from exercise in order to use that arousal, to leverage it towards better cognition, brain health, et cetera, the key thing is to make sure that you're doing exercises that are compound exercises so that these would be the movements, you can look these up, just say compound exercises.

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resistance training, cardiovascular training of both long, medium and short duration can be used to improve the way that your brain functions acutely, meaning immediately in the minutes and hours and the day that you do that exercise, as well as in the long term, in the days, weeks and months after you perform that exercise. And of course,

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Insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With better help, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.

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You can put that anywhere and you'll see that that includes things like squats, deadlifts, you know, bench presses, dips, pull-ups, rows. And yes, of course you want to train your whole body so that you have, you know, a symmetry of a function of strength and you want to offset any injuries and things of that sort or aesthetic reasons perhaps.

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But the idea here is if you want energy from exercise, you want focus, you need the deployment of the neurochemicals that we've been discussing, most notably epinephrine and norepinephrine.

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And through the identification of this motor network, as well as the affective and cognitive networks that converge on this area of the spinal cord and then send communication to the adrenal medulla, you can essentially control the levels of arousal that your body and brain produces.

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So in describing this, my hope is that you'll no longer think about exercise as just elevating your heart rate, or you no longer think about exercise just as moving your body, but rather that the movement of your body is creating specific neurochemical outcomes, both in the body and the brain that create the arousal

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that initiates the improvements in focus and attention that allow you to learn better and that contribute generally to brain health and longevity. And of course, you aficionados out there will remind me, I'm sure, but I'm going to beat you to the punch here.

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Yes, your hypothalamus is also talking to your pituitary, which releases certain chemicals into your bloodstream, which also go to your adrenals. to cause your adrenals to deploy both adrenaline, epinephrine, as well as cortisol. That pathway is still intact, okay? But that's a slightly slower pathway.

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Here I'm focusing on the neural pathways, some of which have only recently been discovered in the last five or 10 years, that work very, very fast to generate the sorts of arousal that are relevant to brain function and brain longevity. Nothing has changed in terms of the old story about how the brain impacts the adrenals, that's all still there, but here we're into the modern stuff.

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And by the way, for those of you that are interested in things like psychosomatic disorders, trauma, and how trauma can quote unquote be stored in the body, not so much stored in the body, but how it can impact the body, and then how the body itself can impact the brain.

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This paper has also been used as support for the idea that indeed those effective areas, those emotional areas, those cognitive areas have a route by which they can communicate with the adrenal medulla to cause the release of adrenaline when we have specific thoughts. It was always known that if we have specific thoughts, it can quote unquote stress us out, our heart rate can go up, et cetera.

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This paper also provides a reasonable anatomical substrate for that phenomenon. You know, I never want to make too much of any one single paper or finding, but I will say that after I read that paper from Strick and colleagues and through some of the subsequent discussions about that paper that I overheard at meetings and so forth, it really made me think differently about exercise.

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Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or looking for a parking spot. So if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.

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And now anytime that I'm feeling tired, provided that I'm not chronically sleep deprived or something of that sort, I remind myself that if I start moving my body, in particular, if I engage core muscles, that was one of the key findings in that paper, that the areas of the brain that control the core muscles, as well as do compound movements, I move multiple joints.

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I start warming up in a way that includes some, maybe even just air squats or some running in place or jumping jacks, things of that sort. that the increase in energy that I'm perceiving is real. It's based on the same neurochemical outputs that would occur had I gone into the gym or to the run or whatever workout with tons of energy, it would just have increased the level of adrenaline further.

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So this idea that we can actually control our body with our mind And to some extent, our mind with our body, that's absolutely true. And this is one of the tools that I find particularly useful anytime I want to overcome that wall of kind of resistance to not doing the physical exercise that I know I and basically all of us should be doing.

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.

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While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.

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Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor-informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels.

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Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.

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I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.

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Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function.

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Okay, so let's think just a little bit more about how the body communicates with the brain during exercise, both in order to understand the mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and function, but also ways that we can leverage that to improve brain health and function by using exercise.

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Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.

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One of the more interesting and powerful and indeed surprising ways that the body communicates with the brain during exercise to improve brain health and indeed our ability to remember things and to learn is the way that our bones, our skeleton, when they're under loads, okay, when they experience mechanical stress, not severe mechanical stress that would break them, but mechanical stress,

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They release hormones, in particular, something called osteocalcin. Now, you might be thinking, wait, the bones release hormones? Yes, your bones release hormones, one of which is called osteocalcin. Osteocalcin is an incredible molecule.

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Animal studies that were done mainly at Columbia School of Medicine, but later also at Columbia and elsewhere in humans have shown that osteocalcin is released from the bones during exercise, both in mice and in humans, travels to the brain so it can cross the blood-brain barrier,

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And there it can encourage the growth of neurons and their connections within the hippocampus, an area of the brain that's vitally important for the encoding of new memories. And there are some data, not a ton, but there's some data which suggests that perhaps, I want to highlight, underscore, and boldface perhaps,

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can increase the number of neurons in the so-called dentate gyrus of the hippocampus to allow even better capacity for memory. Now, osteocalcin is therefore a really interesting molecule, right? Comes from bones, travels to the brain, improves functioning of the hippocampus, which is important for learning and memory. That's amazing.

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And it does so in part through the actions of something that most of you perhaps have heard of, which is called BDNF or brain-derived nootrophic factor. Now, it's very important for us to understand that anytime we hear about exercise increases a growth factor. And by the way, exercise increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

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It increases growth factors that cause the growth of endothelial cells, so blood vessels. We'll talk more about that in a moment. And it increases nerve growth factor. It's not just BDNF. There are lots of different growth factors, a few of which, NGF and BDNF, act on neurons and other growth factors that act on endothelial cells, vasculature.

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It seems that a lot of the effects of BDNF on the brain that are caused by doing exercise and that benefit us in terms of short and long-term memory, our ability to encode new things and remember them for long periods of time, to resist age-related degeneration, because that's the case indeed, that our hippocampus decreases in volume over time as we age, just naturally, even in somebody that doesn't have Alzheimer's dementia, and exercise can adjust the slope of that decline

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significantly provided there's enough exercise and the appropriate exercise. I don't think all, but many of the effects of BDNF appear to be mediated by osteocalcin.

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What this means is that any exercise program that's designed not just to benefit our body, but also our brain health and performance should do something to load the skeleton in some sort of impactful way that causes the release of osteocalcin. Now, unfortunately, there has not been a systematic exploration of the specific types of exercise that best cause the release of osteocalcin in humans.

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But based on what we understand about how osteocalcin is made and released, it seems reasonable to assume and reasonable to employ some exercise within your weekly exercise that involves jumping of some sort. In particular, jumping where you have to control the eccentric or landing portion of that jump. Now, I'm certainly not the first to talk about this.

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It's been discussed in a different context. That is jumping and landing has been discussed in a different context, namely by Peter Attia and others who have talked about the fact that as people age, one of the primary causes of mortality are the infections and the lack of mobility caused by falls. that people generally have when they're going downstairs or down things.

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Stepping down is a common source of falls. Falls are a common source of breaking things. Breaking things is a common source of inactivity, and inactivity is a common source of infections and other things that lead to earlier mortality. What this means for all of us, young, middle-aged, and old, is that we should include some form of jumping in our weekly exercise.

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Now, you could imagine doing that within your high-intensity interval training, provided you can do it safely and not get injured, but this is also a call for all of us to think about including, say, some jumping rope.

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And if you're going to jump rope, maybe not just jumping, you know, a centimeter off the ground to be able to just consistently skip, skip, skip, skip along, but maybe doing some high knees, maybe doing some double unders, if you can do those, perhaps doing some box jumps.

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So jumping off boxes at different heights, again, what you can do safely without getting injured, no doubt is going to provide load to the skeleton. I guess, unless you're doing it underwater in outer space, it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't. And that seems to me like the most direct way to employ this osteocalcin pathway.

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This pathway from the bones to the brain and neurogenesis in the hippocampus, I do believe, is likely to underlie a lot of the enhancement of learning and memory that's seen in terms of the chronic effects of exercise on brain health and brain function over time. That is not just the things that exercise does via arousal in the minutes and hours after exercise, but

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the way that exercise can improve literally the size and structure of one of the most critical structures in our brain that's responsible for learning and memory, the hippocampus. And of course, there are a lot of other ways that the body communicates with the brain.

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We definitely don't have time to go through all of them, but it's worth thinking about a few of them logically, just in terms of listing them off and thinking about how they might communicate with the brain to improve brain health and longevity. When you exercise, you utilize fuel differently, depending on whether or not you're relying on glycogen or fatty acids.

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And of course, it's going to depend on how long you've been exercising and the type of exercise and what you're using for fuel, literally the foods you eat, et cetera. We don't have time to go into all of that, Get this, turns out that there are liver to brain neural pathways.

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So your liver can communicate with neurons and other cells in your brain, including the glial cells, the cells that are important for regulating energy metabolism and a bunch of other things too. Your liver can communicate to your brain, both through neural pathways and by releasing things into your bloodstream that then communicate to your brain, oh, the body is using a different source of fuel.

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It's been using different sources or combinations of fuels for the last 20 minutes. Maybe you should adjust your brain state in order to be able to cope with that or in response to that. And of course, there are other organs in the body that are communicating with the brain also.

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Your diaphragm, for instance, is communicating with your brain through indirect pathways about how you're breathing during exercise. And of course, your brain is controlling your diaphragm too via a number of stations, including the pathway that includes the phrenic nerve. which controls the diaphragm.

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The point here is that once you start exercising, of course it has an impact on the organs in your body. They change the way that they're functioning, your heart, your liver, your adrenals, your skeleton, literally your bones, and of course your muscles. And they are releasing things that impact brain function either directly or indirectly.

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Once you start thinking about exercise in that context, even if we don't parse each and every one of those pathways individually, you can start thinking about exercise as a multifactorial way of enhancing and changing brain activity so that it positions it to learn better in the subsequent hours and days, as well as modifying areas of the brain like the hippocampus by making certain brain areas literally bigger, more powerful,

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engaging the sorts of things that they do in the case of the hippocampus learning, in the case of the prefrontal cortex, context-dependent decision-making, updating strategies, these sorts of things.

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And generally speaking, exercise causes the release of things like BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and nerve growth factor that enhance the health and stability of existing neuron connections. And something that is

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very rarely, if ever discussed publicly, not because it's some sort of secret that people want to keep, but I just don't hear it discussed, is that BDNF is an activity dependent molecule. It's a molecule that can serve to stabilize and enhance the growth of neurons, keep their connections in place, grow new connections, and it does so when neurons are active.

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So the point is that BDNF has to be released in order for that to happen, but the release of BDNF itself is activity dependent, and it acts best on neurons that are already active. So if ever there was a mechanism that could explain why it is that people that exercise regularly seem to maintain healthier brains into later life, it's that one. It's that BDNF is activity dependent.

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And when I say activity dependent, I mean the electrical activity of neurons is what causes the release of BDNF. And then once BDNF is released, it has the best opportunity to stabilize and enhance the growth of existing neurons if those other neurons are already active.

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Now, if we were to list off all the different pathways and mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health and performance, it would be a list of probably, I don't know, somewhere between 40 and 100 different molecular pathways, and probably, I don't know, somewhere between 12 and 20 different anatomical pathways. And we certainly don't have time for all that.

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I don't think that's what you're interested in. I've tried to just highlight some of the key ones today. One additional one that I'd like to highlight is the lactate pathway or the impact of lactate when we exercise. This is getting discussed more and more these days on podcasts and elsewhere.

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One interesting finding, for instance, is that lactate is what's produced when we exercise intensely, our muscles produce lactate, and lactate is a very powerful appetite suppressant. Now, some of you may be saying, when I exercise hard, I get really, really hungry. Well, that may be true, but it's also true that if you exercise really, really hard,

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and then you hydrate well and you wait a little while, oftentimes that hunger will subside. I'm not saying that you should starve yourself after exercise. Fuel as needed for you. If you're an intermittent faster, do that thing. If you like to eat right after you exercise, do that. Do what's best for you, but understand that lactate has powerful effects on our appetite because why?

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Because lactate has powerful effects, not just on our body, but on our brain. and it is able to impact the activity of neurons in our so-called hypothalamus, little marble-sized region above the roof of our mouth that contains some of the neurons that control our appetite. and our degree of satiety.

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Take that two minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off. Okay, let's talk about the relationship between exercise, brain health and longevity and performance.

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So the point here is that lactate is a molecule produced in the body that can actually signal to the brain. Most of you perhaps have heard that lactate can be used as a fuel for neurons during exercise. Lactate is the preferred fuel for neurons under most circumstances, especially under circumstances of intense exercise that spares glucose for other things, including for cognitive work later on.

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This is perhaps one of the reasons why when People do intense exercise provided it's not too long and too intense, and then you go to learn something, you have enhanced focus.

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It's because of the arousal we've been talking about all along today, but it's also because we believe that there's glucose, there's fuel that's been spared that then can be used by the neurons because during the exercise, you weren't using quite as much glucose, you were using lactate. Now, lactate is also

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a stimulus for something called the blood brain barrier, which is made up of endothelial cells, specialized endothelial cells that act as a barrier so that certain things, in particular large molecules, can't cross from the body into the brain. Lactate stimulates the release of something called VEGF, V-G-E-F, which is,

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basically an endothelial growth factor that promotes the stability and growth of the blood brain barrier. This is very important in the context of brain health and longevity and longevity in particular, because one of the major features of age-related cognitive decline and one that's greatly exacerbated in Alzheimer's is a breakdown of the blood brain barrier.

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So the integrity, the structure and function of the blood brain barrier is something that's very important and related to brain health. An exercise that's intense enough to produce lactate causes the increase in VEGF that acts on and within the endothelial cells to improve the integrity of the blood brain barrier.

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And because I mentioned the astrocytes earlier, and because I did my postdoc with somebody that was sort of famous for popularizing the study of astrocytes when no one else wanted to study the astrocytes, now everybody studies the astrocytes, but I have to mention something about astrocytes, which no, they're not just a support cell. Certain types of cells in the brain are called glia.

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The glia come in multiple forms, oligodendrocytes in the periphery, they're called Schwann cells, but then you also have astrocytes and astrocytes sit around the synapse, they ensheath synapses.

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Remember synapses are the communication points between neurons and the astrocytes are beautifully positioned to read out the amount of activity that's occurring between neurons and produce fuel for those neurons. So the astrocytes mainly use glucose for fuel, but they can produce lactate. So again, we have this activity dependent phenomenon that is when certain neurons are very, very active,

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The astrocytes are able to produce more lactate. The neurons can use lactate, spares glucose, and a bunch of great things happen. When I say great things happen, I mean in the context of the ways that exercise can improve brain function, because those elevated levels of lactate in turn also increase BDNF. We already talked about the blood brain barrier.

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Basically the muscles producing lactate is terrific, but The astrocytes producing lactate for the neurons to feed on is also terrific because lactate can be used as a fuel and it triggers all these downstream or subsequent mechanisms, including BDNF.

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So basically what we're talking about is the lots and lots of ways that exercise improves brain health in the long-term, BDNF, brain plasticity, stability of synapses and so forth, maybe even new neurons, maybe. Not a lot of evidence for that in humans yet, frankly, but maybe.

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And exercise can improve brain function in the short term through mechanisms of arousal, but also through alternate fuel usage, such as lactate from the body and from cells within the brain that we call the astrocytes, and the release of all sorts of other things, IGF-1 to promote more vasculature and on and on and on.

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And let's just take a couple of minutes and really clearly define what we mean by exercise, because most of us have a concept of what exercise is, but for sake of understanding the relationship between exercise and brain performance, most of the peer reviewed studies focus on two general categories of exercise, either cardiovascular exercise or resistance training.

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It's really quite beautiful, the sort of wave front of molecules and neural pathways that's initiated when we exercise, provided we exercise intensely enough. So this is a double and triple call for including at least some high intensity interval training, VO2 max type training each week, as well as doing resistance training.

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And of course the long duration cardiovascular training, the sort of, you know, 30 or 45 or 60 minute, or maybe even two hours zone two type stuff. You can look up zone two, but it's basically a level of cardiovascular training that still allows you to talk, but were you to go any more intensely, you wouldn't be able to complete sentences.

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That zone two training, of course, is going to be very powerful for the health and integrity of the cardiovascular system that's going to allow for the delivery of all these molecules. And of course the delivery of blood flow itself to the brain because cerebral blood flow is central to brain function.

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Okay, so if you're right at the threshold of about to be overwhelmed by the number of different mechanisms by which exercise improves brain function and health, We're not going to add any more mechanisms. We are, however, going to talk about the practical steps that you can take to make sure that you're getting the most brain benefits from your exercise.

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Based on what we've talked about so far, as well as a broad survey of the literature, and again, it is a big literature, here are the four things that I believe everyone should be doing every single week in terms of their exercise program. Now, we've talked a lot about exercise on this podcast before.

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I can summarize the very, very top contour of what my takeaway is from the literature and from discussions with experts such as Dr. Andy Galpin, and others, which is, I believe that everybody should include both resistance training, could be body weight, free weights, machines, some combination of those, as well as cardiovascular training each week.

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And that the cardiovascular training should include both high intensity interval training, at least once per week, and some so-called long slow distance training or zone two type training each week. So presumably most of you are doing some form of that. So maybe you're doing more cardio than resistance training. Maybe you're doing more resistance training than cardio.

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If you're interested in a zero cost program where you can start to sculpt out a idealized program for you, but you want to start with a kind of general template, we have a newsletter that you can access at hubertmanlab.com. Zero cost. You don't even have to sign up to access it. Although if you want to sign up for the newsletter, that could be valuable to you too. Completely zero cost.

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You can go to hubermanlab.com, go to newsletter, scroll down to foundational fitness protocol. It describes the program that I've been following essentially for 30 plus years. And again, it's about three cardiovascular training sessions per week, three resistance training sessions per week. The cardiovascular training ranges in time from about 12 minutes and then a longer 60 minute session.

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The resistance training is generally 45 to 75 minutes. So on average, about an hour. And it might sound like a lot, but when you look at that foundational fitness protocol, what you realize is that some of the workouts are really, really short. Some of them are a little bit longer. None of them are longer than an hour. So it's pretty reasonable to do.

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Now, of course, cardiovascular exercise can be a very short duration, high intensity. So getting heart rates up way, way, way up or longer duration, lower intensity. Now, typically the amount of time scales with that. So the shorter intensity stuff tends to be

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And I certainly did it while working, well, to be frank, extremely long hours for many, many years. So provided your sleep is intact and other areas of your life are or dialed in with stress, et cetera, should be doable for most everybody, but modify it according to what you need. Or if you're doing something completely different, more power to you.

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I just want you to know that's available as a zero cost resource if you want to check it out. With all of that said, whatever exercise you happen to be doing or you happen to be planning, I do believe it should include four things specifically to improve brain health and performance. Although these four things will also benefit you at the level of your bodily health, no doubt.

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The first thing is to include at least one workout per week that is of a long, slow distance nature. So zone two type cardio, maybe you get a little bit up into zone three, but basically jogging, swimming, rowing, Any activity that you can carry out consistently for 45 to 75 minutes without getting injured, right? People always say, well, do I have to run?

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No, if you don't like running and running's too hard on your body or you'll get injured, then do something else. Maybe you do the rower, maybe you ride a stationary bike, maybe you ride a road bike. For me, it's jogging generally or hiking with a weight vest. Those are the things that I enjoy and that I can do without getting injured. But for other people, it's a different,

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It's a different exercise. But at least one long, slow distance training session per week is going to be very beneficial for brain health because of the way that it impacts cerebral blood flow and to filial health, and basically the way that cardiovascular health improves brain function at the level of blood flow fuel delivery, et cetera.

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The second thing is to include at least one workout per week that's of the so-called high intensity interval training type. Now, there are a lot of different types of high intensity interval training out there. In fact, Dr. Andy Galpin says, you know, we'll hear about say like the four by four by four protocol, right? Four minutes of going as hard as you can for four minutes

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basically where there's no variation in the intensity through that whole four minutes, you're going hard the whole four minutes, but only as hard as you can for the entire four minutes, then resting four minutes, and then repeating that four by four cycle four times. So that's one way to do it. But Dr. Andy Yalpin would be the first to tell you that

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probably also get great results from a three by three by four type of workout or a six by six by six type of workout. Although for many people that's going to be too much and too intense.

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quick bouts of either 30 second, 60 seconds, sometimes two minute, or even four minute all out effort with some period of rest afterwards, or longer duration, 20, 30, 45, or even 60 minutes of cardiovascular training at a more steady state, lower intensity.

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Or if you're me and you prefer a high intensity interval training session that is more like a two minutes on as hard as you can go for two minutes and then rest for say three to four minutes and then repeat maybe four times, maybe five times, well then do that. I have a high intensity interval training session that I do when I'm very limited on time, which involves getting on the Airdyne bike.

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They sometimes call it the assault bike. There's a lot of resistance, has that fan, which I always thought was to cool me off. But then, you know, once I actually got on one and started riding, I realized that that's to provide resistance. So, but basically if I'm limited on time, I'll hop on there, I'll pedal for about a minute or two, just kind of warm up.

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And then I'll go all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds, all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds. The first three or four of those cycles, feeling pretty good. By the seventh and eighth one, I'm praying. And generally when one finishes that type of workout, your heart rate is very, very elevated.

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Now, I don't tend to track my heart rate during exercise, perhaps I should, but I don't like to get too weighed down with technology when I exercise. I like to go more on feel, that's just me. I find that my heart rate is extremely high right as I get off that thing. But five minutes later, it's back to baseline.

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And I certainly feel energized after doing that to go do some cognitive work, to shower up and to head to work, that sort of thing. So pick a high intensity interval training session that you can do at least once per week, and that works for you. And again, it's really important to pick a form of exercise for the high intensity interval training that you can do without getting injured.

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This is so important. You know, one way to really limit your brain health and bodily health is to get injured and to not be able to exercise. In a few minutes, I'll tell you about what happens when you don't exercise for a certain duration and how that negatively impacts your brain health. And it's not that long before that starts to happen. But in the meantime,

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The first was long, slow distance or so-called zone two. So we could call that LSD, not the psychedelic, but long, slow distance exercise. Second was high intensity interval training or HIIT or HIIT. The third would be TUT, T-U-T, time under tension.

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If you're doing resistance training, and I do believe everybody should be doing resistance training, there are a near infinite number of different ways to do resistance training, as you well know. you can move the weight ballistically, you can control the eccentric, you can do any number of different things.

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But some proportion of the exercises that you do during your resistance training during the week should include time under tension training, where you're really emphasizing the contraction of the muscles, the slow lowering of the weight, as well as the lifting of the weight, contracting the muscles as hard as you can.

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And I should mention that within the tens of thousands of studies that are out there exploring the relationship between exercise and brain health and longevity, you will mostly see studies focused on cardiovascular exercise. And most of those studies early on were focused on the longer duration, lower intensity stuff.

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And this is really to emphasize the nerve to muscle pathways in the way that time under tension promotes the release of things from muscles

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into the bloodstream that can positively impact the brain, as well as the way that focusing your brain on exercises such that you're isolating muscles, or even if you're not doing a so-called isolation exercise, maybe you're doing a compound exercise like a dip or a squat or a deadlift, but that really concentrating on the muscles that are supposed to be managing the work and not just moving the weight, but challenging the muscles.

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This is a very important thing, challenging the muscles, using the weight, not lifting weights or moving weights. By focusing on time under tension, you will of course get benefits as it relates to hypertrophy and strength increases, in particular hypertrophy. Doing time under tension requires you to engage the, what we call the upper motor neuron to lower motor neuron.

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You have motor neurons in your cortex. You also have motor neurons and your spinal cord, those pathways that then go out to the muscles and control the muscles in very deliberate ways.

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And time under tension training is very beneficial for the deployment of the molecules that work both within the body, but also within the brain to support brain health and function, both in the short term and most particularly in the long term. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Maui Nui Venison.

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Maui Nui Venison is 100% wild harvested venison from the island of Maui, and it is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be consuming about one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day. That protein provides critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis.

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but it also promotes overall health, given the importance of muscle tissue as an organ. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories. Maui Nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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so that getting one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. I personally like all of those.

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In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or you're simply on the go, they have Maui Nui venison sticks, which have 10 grams of protein per stick at just 55 calories. And they're extremely convenient. You can pretty much take them anywhere.

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So typically 30 to 60 minutes of lower intensity, yet still elevating the heart rate exercise. Nowadays, there's more of a focus on the high intensity interval training.

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Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash Huberman. Okay, so we have long, slow distance, high intensity interval training, and some degree of time under tension training with resistance training. you might be asking how many sets, what proportion? That depends on your goals, right?

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If you're a power lifter and you're trying to lift bigger weights, or you simply want to get stronger, you're not going to devote a lot of your training to time under tension, most likely. You're going to be focusing mostly on the performance of those lifts to move more weight. But in my case, what I do, just for sake of example, again, this is just what I happen to do, is

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I tend to make a full third of my resistance training just focused on time under tension. So if I do two exercises, typically the first exercise is a compound exercise. So if it's a shoulder press, for instance, I'll do a couple of warmup sets and then the work sets, I try and move the weight. And generally I tend to work pretty heavy for me in the four to eight repetition range.

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I'll try and move the weight as quickly as I can on the concentric phase, the lifting phase, and then at least twice as slow on the lowering phase. And then I pause while keeping the muscles under tension. I never really set the weight down at all during a set, if I'm doing my job, that is. And then the second exercise that I do, I really focus even more on time under tension.

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So whether or not it's a compound exercise or an isolation exercise, again, compound exercise, multiple joints moving, isolation exercise, single joints moving, I'll really concentrate on keeping the muscle under tension the entire time. In fact, I'll lift the weight off the stack if it's a machine, or if it's a free weight, just a little bit, engage the muscles that I'm trying to activate,

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or train and then keep it under tension throughout the concentric, the contraction and the lowering of that weight and then never actually set it down until the end of the set, AKA increasing the time under tension. And then the fourth category of exercise that I believe everybody should include in their existing workouts or add if you're not currently working out is some sort of explosive jumping

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And today we're even going to hear about some studies that involve very, very short bursts, so-called sprints of activity, as short as six seconds long, followed by a period of rest, repeated for a number of times, and exploring what the effect of that sort of, I should say, very, very short intensity exercise is on immediate and long-term brain health and performance.

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and or eccentric landing. Now the explosive jumping with eccentric landing, you could do on a mat, right? Most people won't do it on concrete because they're worried about impact, that sort of thing. But let's say you have some mats or you're on a lawn or you're on dirt, or you're jumping up onto a box as high as you can and then jumping down and controlling the eccentric portion.

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Again, pick something that you can do safely, progress slowly, right? If you're going to jump up and off boxes, you want to start with low boxes. I know that many of you can jump quite high and I'm not one of those people, but

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if you can jump quite high and then you're going to jump off that box and you're going to do this as a new thing, you'll notice that anytime you add eccentric training to your workout regimen, it tends to increase soreness a lot. And often people get injured by including a new form of movement, in particular form of movement that you can fall and or

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not just falling, but by including a lot of eccentric movements that they hadn't been doing previously.

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Again, be really safe about this, but that loading of the skeleton through eccentric movement and controlling the descent, super important, not just for your body, not just to avoid falls, not just to improve coordination and a bunch of other great things, but also to get that release of osteocalcin, the improvements in BDNF, brain performance, brain health, and so on.

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And I'm guessing that most of you can probably incorporate these four things, long, slow distance, high intensity interval training, some deliberate time under tension training during your resistance training, again, could be done with body weight, doesn't have to even be done with machines or free weights, as well as some explosive and eccentric control training without adding any time to your existing workout regimen, simply by incorporating it into whatever workouts you happen to already be doing.

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if you're exercising regularly, the effects of exercise on brain health and performance compound over time, making you better able to learn things, better able to retain information from the past, and indeed to expand your brain's capacity to learn new types of information in new ways.

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And the explosive eccentric control training could be done frankly, at the end of a run. You could do it at the end of your zone two day. You could do it on the end of a hit day. Whenever you do it and however you do it, just try not to get injured. That's the most important thing. Why? Well, it turns out if you get injured, you can't exercise.

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Sometimes you can, and it's good to continue exercising provided you're not aggravating that injury, but a lot of times you can't. And there are actually studies of how quickly your brain starts to suffer if you don't exercise. Now, most of these studies have been done on very experienced athletes. or people that are exercising a lot and then are forced to detrain or stop training completely.

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And in some of these studies, they've done this independent of anything else. It's not like these people got sick from a cold or flu and then had to stop training. They'll just have them train a lot and then stop training and then start to look at some of the effects that occur within the brain.

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And the major thing that I was able to extract from that literature is that after about 10 days of not doing any training, that is no cardiovascular training, no resistance training, you start to see significant decrements in brain oxygenation levels, as well as some other markers that are indicative of brain health or that would be indicative of brain health if they were to continue.

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So if you haven't been training at all for a long period of time, your brain is suffering. The good news is you can start benefiting your brain very quickly by exercising. Check out the foundational fitness protocol. It involves a ramp up or warming kind of phase because you don't want to jump into something whole hog if you haven't been doing it. if you haven't been exercising at all.

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Forget what you did in high school. By the way, folks, anytime people tell you, back in the day, I was so fit, that's not the way to think about it. It's about today and what you're going to do today and forward, okay? The past is great. It tells you you're out of capacity, but you really just want to take where you are now and try and improve where you are now going forward, okay?

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Okay, so cardiovascular training of different durations and intensities. involving different durations of rest are one category that we're going to talk about today. The other category of exercise we're going to talk about today is resistance training.

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The past is the past. So how fit you were in high school or in junior high school, or when you were in the kindergarten class, you were the first one to make it around to get the blocks and the cookie in the milk first, like awesome. But if you're going to start up having not exercised in a long, long time, think about what you can do now so you don't get injured.

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Because when you get injured, you can't exercise. And when you don't exercise for 10 days or more, that's when you start to see decrements in brain health. So if you're not exercising now, it's a great time to get to it. If you are exercising now and you have to take a week off because of some sort of illness or injury or family event or stress, look, don't obsess over that.

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Don't miss out on some of the key things of life or make yourself sicker by exercising. Please, please, please don't come to the gym sick, okay? I did a whole episode on colds and flus and anytime people are coughing and sneezing and they tell you they're not contagious, that's completely unsubstantiated by the scientific data. Please don't come to the gym sick.

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So if you had to take a week off, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll probably come back stronger in the end. Take a couple of days and ramp back up. But after about 10 days, your brain health starts to suffer. So that's an important number to keep in mind.

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Okay, so multiple times throughout today's discussion, we've been talking about how exercise increases arousal, arousal improves brain function. That's true. You know what's also true? What's also true is that exercise improves brain health in the long term. Yes, through the deployment of things like BDNF. Yes, through the deployment of things like osteocalcin and on and on.

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but it also does so by improving your sleep. There are now many, many studies showing that sleep is the thing that mediates many, not all, but many of the positive effects of exercise on brain performance and long-term brain health. So what this means is that you have to make sure that you're getting adequate amounts of sleep. It's not sufficient just to exercise. You need to get proper sleep.

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Now, most of the studies involving resistance training and their effects on the brain, both brain longevity and brain performance, focus on either compound, so multi-joint movements, so think squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, dips, et cetera,

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And I've done multiple episodes on how to optimize your sleep, how to improve your sleep, how to deal with insomnia, shift work, If you want to learn about any and all of that, either from podcasts or from our newsletter, go to hubermanlab.com, put sleep into the search function and it will take you to the episodes and the newsletters that discuss that.

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In addition, if you have a specific issue with sleep, like you're doing shift work or you're jet lagged or you are suffering from middle of the night waking or trouble shifting your schedule because you want to become an early riser, put those terms into the search function.

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It will take you to the specific timestamps in those episodes so that you don't have to listen to the entire episodes because I realize that some of them are quite long. And of course, there's the newsletter on sleep that lists off the various things that you should and can be doing to improve your sleep, no matter how well you happen to be sleeping now.

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but tons and tons of zero cost resources there in PDF form and podcast form and on and on. We also did this six episode series on sleep with Dr. Matthew Walker, one of the world's experts in sleep. So that's also there. So you can find all that there. One question I get a lot is let's say I don't sleep that well, should I exercise?

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Well, the short answer is yes, provided that it was just one night of poor sleep. In fact, there are studies showing that if you're slightly sleep deprived, meaning one night's poor sleep, so most people need somewhere between six and nine hours of sleep, varies by person, varies by age, varies by time of year and so on, all discussed in that series with Matt Walker.

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Most people need six to nine hours, but let's say you normally get eight or you normally get seven, but you're down two hours on sleep for whatever reason. Should you exercise the next morning? The short answer is yes, provided it was just one night of poor sleep. It turns out that exercising after a poor night's sleep can help offset some of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on what?

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on brain performance and health. Now, you don't want to get into a habit of this. You don't want to get into a habit of using exercise as a way to compensate for sleep loss. So if you don't sleep well for one night, exercise is a great way to offset that sleep loss effect on the brain or that would otherwise affect the brain. You can compensate for it by doing some exercise.

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Keep in mind, you want to exercise in a way that's not too intense because you can drive your immune system down and be more vulnerable to infections. That's certainly the case after a poor night's sleep. You also want to be really careful with what you do for that exercise in terms of your coordinated movement. It's much easier to get injured when you're sleep deprived.

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But very often, and this is just a byproduct of how studies are done in the laboratory, very often the exploration of the relationship between resistance training and brain health and longevity are single joint isolation exercises, like a single leg, leg extension even. You might be thinking, wait, just one leg doing the leg extension? Yes. The reason for that

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In fact, there's a really nice set of studies, Lane Norton's talked about this elsewhere, that the relationship between sleep, or I should say sleep deprivation and injury is a strong one. And the relationship between sleep loss and pain and failure to recover from injury is also a strong one. The direct point being, if you're slightly sleep deprived, sure, go ahead and exercise.

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That will actually help you offset some of the negative effects of that sleep deprivation, but you want to be careful how you exercise so you don't get sick and you don't get injured. So you can keep in mind that if you're having trouble sleeping, or even if you're a great sleeper already, getting exercise will further improve the architecture of your sleep.

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In fact, there's some evidence that doing high intensity interval training can improve the amount of deep slow wave sleep that you get. And there's some additional data showing that if you do high intensity training early in the day, and that's combined with a bunch of other things that stimulate autonomic arousal. So here we are again at autonomic arousal.

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Things like caffeine, if that's in your program, you don't have to drink caffeine. Things like getting bright light in your eyes early in the day, definitely do that. Don't stare at the sun or any light so bright that it's dangerous or painful to look at, but certainly get bright light in your eyes.

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All those things that increase autonomic arousal early in the day can also help improve the amount and the quality of sleep that you get at night in particular, rapid eye movement sleep, which is so critical for learning and memory.

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In fact, there's something called the first night effect, which is the amount and quality of rapid eye movement sleep that you get on the first night after trying to learn something, powerfully dictates whether or not you actually learn and remember that thing. Because as you recall, Learning and memory neuroplasticity is a two-step process.

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You need to be focused and alert during the encoding phase, during the learning, but it's in states of deep rest, sleep in particular, but also non-sleep deep rest. But rapid eye movement sleep is the kind of king of reshaping your brain connections for the better, unloading the emotional load of experiences that were troubling. That happens during rapid eye movement sleep.

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Just a little bit of REM deprivation, rapid eye movement sleep deprivation will make you more emotional, and will make the painful experiences of recent and distant past also more painful. Get more rapid eye movement sleep if you can. It also consolidates learning of things that you want to remember.

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Again, exercise early in the day, in particular high intensity exercise, combined with some of the other things we just discussed, terrific way to improve the amount and quality of sleep that you get at night. And of course, all of that geysers up to what? Better brain health and performance in the short term and in the long term.

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Okay, so I listed off the four types of training that you absolutely want to include in your exercise regimen if improving your brain health and performance is one of your goals. And obviously that should be one of your goals. Your brain is your central command center for your entire brain, but also your body. There's a fifth category of exercise,

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that everyone should include if one's goal is to have a better and more resilient and indeed a better performing brain compared to your age match controls. And to be direct, that fifth category is the one that you absolutely don't want to do. What do I mean by that? Well, there's an absolutely beautiful literature about a brain area.

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I've talked a little bit about this before in our episode about tenacity and willpower. I've talked about it on a few other podcasts as well. It came up during the podcast episode that I did with the one and only David Goggins. And that brain area is the anterior mid cingulate cortex.

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The anterior mid cingulate cortex, very briefly, is a brain area that is powerfully engaged when we lean into challenges, including physical challenges, but also mental challenges, emotional challenges. And we get that, I'm going to push through tenacity and engaging our willpower. Now it's remarkable to think about this brain area.

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and I spoke to some of the scientists that do this sort of work, is that when they have subjects do a, say, seated single leg, leg extension as the form of resistance training, I know I and some of you are probably chuckling like, really? Of all the things you could select to see if it impacts brain health, you're going to have people kick up one knee? Yep, you do that. Why?

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This is a brain area, mind you, that when my colleague at Stanford, Joe Parvizzi, putting a little electrode into, he was doing this for other reasons related to important neurosurgeries that patients needed and stimulated,

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that particular brain area, anterior mid cingulate cortex, people reported immediately feeling as if there was some impending challenge, but that they were going to lean into that challenge. Remarkable. This brain area has intense connectivity with many, many other brain areas, the dopaminergic system, the so-called arousal system, so multiple brain areas involved in arousal.

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areas of the brain that are involved in learning, areas of the brain that are involved in stress, areas of the brain that are involved in lots and lots of different things. It's a major hub for inputs from other brain areas and outputs to other brain areas. But here's what's most remarkable about the anterior mid cingulate cortex. There's a category of humans referred to as super agers.

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Super agers are people that defy the aging process, at least at the level of cognition. They maintain the volume of certain brain areas well into older age when their age match counterparts are losing the same brain areas, meaning people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s have brain areas that are shrinking. Even in cases where people don't have Alzheimer's dementia, areas of the brain are shrinking.

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Super-agers are people that maintain the healthy, full volume of these brain areas. And indeed, in some cases, the volume, the size of these brain areas continues to increase into their later years. One of the brain areas that maintains or increases volume in these super-agers is the anterior mid-singulate cortex. And there aren't many other brain areas that do that.

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The anterior mid-singulate cortex is the main site that can be tacked to this phenomenon of super-aging. Now, super-aging and super-agers is a bit of a misnomer because what's happening in these people is they're not just holding onto the volume of their anterior mid-singulate cortex, they're also maintaining healthy cognition,

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which is flexible strategy, context-dependent learning, their memory, their working memory. They're doing phenomenally well, not just for their age, but even compared to some much younger people.

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So these super-agers are really interesting, both for sake of what they can do into their later years and because their anterior mid-singulate cortex is holding on to its size and in some cases increasing its size. What can allow you to activate and increase the size of your anterior mid cingulate cortex? Well, it's very simple, to do things that you don't want to do.

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I should be very clear, we're talking about things that can be done safely that aren't going to damage you physically or psychologically. but we are talking about exercise, or in some cases, cognitive exercise, but today we're talking about physical exercise that you would much rather not do. So if you're like me and you love resistance training, it can be hard, right?

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Some days I want to do it more than others, and sometimes the workouts are much harder than others, but I love it. But if I want to maintain and increase the size of my anterior mid cingulate cortex, I absolutely have to find some form of physical exercise that I would much rather not do. But as I mentioned before, that's also safe physically, and that's not going to damage me emotionally.

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Well, most people can do that type of movement. It doesn't take any training. or it just takes a little bit of direction as to how to do it. So it can be done reasonably safely by many people, including people that are non-athletes, often older than 65 years old.

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I don't know what kind of physical exercise would damage me emotionally, but you get the point. This brain area has been explored in a number of different studies. So successful dieters increase the size of their anterior mid cingulate cortex. People that fail to reach a goal, a diet goal or other goal, experience a shrinking of their anterior mid cingulate cortex. There's also examples of

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physical exercise, increasing anterior mid-singulate cortex, skill challenges, and on and on. The important point is that the anterior mid-singulate cortex is agnostic with respect to what you do, except that it has to be something that you don't want to do if you want to build and maintain its size.

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And that building and maintaining of the anterior mid-singulate cortex size is strongly correlated. It's not necessarily causal, but it's strongly correlated with this super aging phenomenon. There's a wonderful review about the anterior mid-singulate cortex that was authored by none other than Lisa Feldman Barrett. She came up earlier in this episode.

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She's a world-class researcher on the topic of emotions and the basis of emotions, et cetera. The title of this paper is The Tenacious Brain, How the Anterior Mid-Singulate Cortex Contributes to Achieving Goals. And there's one figure in this paper, and I just want to summarize a couple of things from, because it's just, like a wow figure. There aren't many figures like this.

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I mean, this is a review article. So this figure includes panels pooling from a bunch of different studies, but I'm going to just highlight a few of these by paraphrasing what's in the figure legend. Okay. So bear with me here. I think you'll find this very interesting. Okay, so you can't see the pictures because many people are listening to this on audio, but you can certainly look up the paper.

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We provide a link to it in the show note captions, but these points are worth paying attention to. Spontaneous anterior mid cingulate cortex activity predicts grit, this psychological phenomenon that we refer to as grit. Now this is teased out in a study of grit. Grit is this ability to lean into challenge and the, Mere spontaneous activity, right? Not evoked activity.

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There's spontaneous activity, which is the activity that occurs sort of naturally as a consequence of engaging in a particular thought pattern or behavior. And then there's evoked activity when you stimulate a brain area. This is spontaneous activity. Spontaneous inter mid-singulate activity is associated with the psychological phenomenon the verb that we call grit.

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Not that there aren't some very fit 65 year olds, but just people who are older than 65, but don't have a lot of athletic background can sit down in a chair, put the pin at the appropriate weight and move their knee or rather elevate their foot while seated in a chair, so-called single leg, leg extension.

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And grit can be thought of as an adjective, right? Somebody who's really gritty, but it should best be thought of as a verb. It's the leaning into challenge. Greater anterior mid-singulate cortex activity is associated with higher levels of persistence. This again was teased out in a study of persistence. So these aren't just philosophical statements or theoretical statements.

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These are based on brain imaging studies where people are being challenged with a particular set of challenges while they're in a so-called FMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. Activation of the anterior mid-singulate cortex is associated with grit and with persistence. And anterior midsingulate signal is associated with willingness to exert more effort.

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If people have to exert more effort and they're willing to do that, boom, anterior midsingulate cortex activity goes up. Also, anterior mid-singulate activity increases, get this, during effort magnitude estimation. Even when people are just trying to gauge how much effort something's going to take, that starts to initiate activity of the anterior mid-singulate cortex.

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The, oh boy, this is going to be a big one. I got to do this. And I'll explain how I engage my anterior mid-singulate cortex. You'll have to decide if that's something that you hate enough so that you can use it too. Almost done here, folks. Anterior mid-singulate signal tracks the subjective value of effort exerted.

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As people start to track how much effort they're exerting, anterior mid-singulate cortex activity goes up. And last but not least, anterior mid-singulate cortex stimulation, so this is no longer spontaneous activity, but stimulation increases the will to persevere. Incredible, never before

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meaning never before reading this article and learning about anterior mid-singulate cortex, which again is largely the consequence of work done somewhere between the years of 2010 and now, 2025, did we even understand what the anterior mid-singulate cortex is there for and is doing.

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It could do other things too, but this is an extraordinary set of findings and an extraordinary brain structure that everyone should know about. And that's why number five on that list, if you want to improve brain function and brain health over time,

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is to do something you really don't want to do, something really challenging, both psychologically challenging and physically challenging at least once per week, make sure it's safe psychologically and physically, but do that thing. For me, I must confess it's deliberate cold exposure, but it's deliberate cold exposure under particular conditions. I'll be the first to say that I love

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getting into the ice bath or the cold plunge or taking a cold shower after I've been in a hot sauna for 20 or 30 minutes or after a long run where I'm sweating and I want to cool off or on a hot summer day. But most of the time, that's not the case, meaning most of the time when I do deliberate cold exposure and sometimes I'll do it by cold shower, which, by the way, is zero cost.

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And also it gives the benefit of the opposite leg within subject control for comparison in terms of strength increases. Okay, so set aside any kind of, you know, like eye rolls or chuckles that you might have about single leg, leg extensions as the total form of resistance training that's being explored because yes, those studies are still informative.

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It'll even save you on your heating bill. So you don't need to buy any equipment or you could do a cold plunge or an ice bath, but you don't need one. Most of the time, when I even think about getting into the cold plunge or taking a cold shower, that is very likely increasing my anterior mid cingulate cortex activity because I love, love, love the heat. I love sauna. I'm very heat adapted.

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I'm comfortable at very high temperatures in the sauna. I don't hate the cold, but I close to hate the cold. So for me, the first wall to get over, the first bit of resistance that's really hard for me to get over is to walk towards the cold plunge. Then it's to take the lid off. Then it's to look at the thing. Then it's to get in. But I force myself to do it. I make sure that I do it safely.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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And I make sure that I do it for about one to three minutes, sometimes longer. But I do it because yes, deliberate cold exposure increases release of the so-called catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Also, yes, I know that those catecholamines are going to make me feel much better after I get out of the cold plunge for many, many hours. That's been established.

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But I also do deliberate cold exposure by cold shower or by cold immersion because I hate it. And because I know that by doing it, I'm going to be activating my will to persevere, my grit, my willpower. Now today's discussion is not about deliberate cold exposure, it's about exercise. So what I've started doing in recent months, and I'm certainly going to continue into 2025,

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is to start adding some form of exercise that I absolutely don't want to do in order to activate my anterior mid cingulate cortex. Now for me, because my schedule is very full, I'm already doing six workouts per week. Again, some of them are shorter, some of them are longer. I don't have a lot of extra time to exercise.

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I don't have a lot of time to start rolling jujitsu for a couple hours a week, which I wouldn't loathe, but there's a big barrier for me to do that sort of thing. So maybe it's perfect for activating AMCC, anterior mid cingulate cortex. Rather, what I've decided to do

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is to include the one thing that I've been putting off for years that frankly I may enjoy down the line, but that I don't enjoy currently. And that's to do some sort of really coordinated specific motor activity that has to be done precisely or very precisely before you can say that you've quote unquote done it right.

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And for me, the thing that I'm selecting because I already like to jump rope and I can do a few different things with the jump rope. I'm not super skilled, but I can already jump rope is something that my friend Mark Bell exposed me to. which is this rope flow thing. Feel free to laugh if you want, but this stuff is hard and it's really, really cool.

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The rope flow involves just taking a rope, okay? There may be specific commercial brands of these, but I was told I can just use a kind of thick rope that you buy at the hardware store, like a dog leash type rope. And you can look this up online, we'll provide a link to it. There's a specific pattern of moving the rope where you're not actually jumping through it, so it's not jumping rope,

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but you're actually moving it in front of and behind your body and from side to side and involves a lot of different shifting from one limb to the other in very deliberate ways.

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And as I'm discussing this, I realized that I really don't want to do this, but I know it's going to be very useful for me, which is exactly why I'm going to use it in 2025 to enhance my anterior mid cingulate cortex activity. The only fear being that I'm going to start to like it and then I'll have to find something else to engage my anterior mid cingulate cortex.

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In fact, they perhaps even identified the lower threshold for the amount of resistance training and type of resistance training that could benefit the brain. But we also see studies that involve compound exercises. So having people do free weight squats or even weighted squats or deadlifts or bench press, dip, deadlift type combinations.

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And perhaps at that point, I'll look to you guys in the comment sections to figure out what sorts of exercise I would hate the most in order to make sure that I'm getting my anterior mid cingulate cortex activation, because yes, increased coordination is great. Who wouldn't want that?

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But mainly because I want to improve my brain performance and brain function, both in the short term and over time. So if you want, in the comment section on YouTube, because that's where I can see the comments best, or perhaps on Spotify as well, where they now have a comment section. I guess Apple has a comment section too.

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YouTube, Apple, or Spotify, put in the comment section the form of exercise that's both psychologically and physically safe for you to embrace, but that you would loathe to do and that you're going to perhaps, no, not perhaps, that you're going to commit to doing in 2025. And then we can compare and contrast and,

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We can all see which ones we hate the most, and then we can exchange which exercises we hate the most, and everyone can laugh at us for doing these things that we hate, and yet we'll be the ones laughing because our anterior mid-singulate cortices will be nice and plump well into our old ages, and everybody else will be wondering where the comment section is.

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Thank you everybody for joining me for today's discussion, all about how exercise can be leveraged to improve brain health and brain performance. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.

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And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook threads and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes everything from podcast summaries to what we call protocols in the form of brief one to three page PDFs that cover things like how to optimize your sleep, how to regulate your dopamine. We also have protocols related to deliberate.

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cold exposure, get a lot of questions about that, deliberate heat exposure, and on and on. Again, all available at completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should mention that we do not share your email with anybody.

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about exercise, brain health, and performance. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Again, when you look at the literature exploring exercise and brain health, You're looking at studies that in the best cases are very tightly controlled. That typically means having people do them in the laboratory in a very specific way, sometimes using untrained subjects, meaning when the subjects arrive at the study, they haven't done much exercise of that sort.

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Sometimes it's involving trained subjects, both have their caveats, of course, but keep in mind that during today's discussion, I'm going to be pooling at many times across all these studies, exploring cardiovascular exercise of different duration and intensities, resistance training of different types, and sometimes different intensities as well, but where there is a specific piece of knowledge that can be gleaned from understanding the exact type of exercise that was done and a specific type of brain change,

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In researching today's episode, I quickly came to realize that the number of studies that have explored the relationship between exercise, brain performance, and brain health as well as the range of different types of exercise that have been explored in that context is extremely vast.

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especially in cases where it's been shown to be especially beneficial, I will be sure to highlight that. So as we proceed in today's discussion, keep in mind, exercise is many things, two general categories. Most of the studies focus on high intensity or low intensity cardio. Most of the studies involve either

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single joint isolation exercises, sometimes even single joint, single leg isolation exercises or compound exercises. And keep in mind that most of the studies exploring the relationship between exercise and brain health and performance are done to explore two types of changes, either what are called acute changes, meaning immediate changes.

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So they have people do the exercise and then they have them take a cognitive test or some other form of test that analyzes brain health and performance, or they look at chronic effects, which are what are the changes in brain performance and health over long periods of time, meaning having people do a particular type of exercise anywhere from two to four times per week,

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although typically it's three times per week, and doing that for anywhere from four weeks to six months. Again, all of this relates to the practical aspects of running controlled studies in the laboratory.

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So if by now you're thinking this is really complicated, how is it that we're supposed to tease out the best things to do given this huge ball of barbed wire of different types of studies, variables, et cetera? Well, I assure you, we are going to make this very clear and very actionable.

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And the thing to keep in mind is that fortunately, most all of the studies, yes, most all of the studies that have explored the relationship between exercise, brain health and longevity and performance find positive effects. Now, for some of you who are skeptics, you might be thinking, well, great, so you can do any form of exercise? Well, in some sense, yes.

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I'll actually tell you this right off the bat. There are good data showing that if people do six second sprints, max all out sprints on a stationary bicycle, followed by one minute rest, and repeat that six times, you see significant acute effects on brain performance. So the brain performance could be a memory task. Sometimes it is a memory task.

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It could be what's called a Stroop task, which is a cognitive flexibility task where you have to distinguish between the colors that words are written in and the content of the words. Okay, so called Stroop task. I've talked about this on previous podcasts. I'll talk about it a little bit more later. Regardless of the cognitive test that's used, that very short duration, high intensity training

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There are literally tens of thousands of studies on this topic, as well as meta analyses and reviews, all of which point to positive effects of doing exercise of various types on brain health and performance. Within those many, many studies, you'll find many, many different exercise protocols that lead to improvements in brain performance and longevity.

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increases performance significantly. As well, 20 or 30 minutes of so-called steady state cardio, figuring out how fast you can run or row or swim or stationary bike.

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for 20 to 30 minutes at a steady state, and then you analyze people's cognitive performance on a memory task, can be a working memory task, so remembering a short string of numbers, or it could be math problems, it could be the Stroop task, any number of different tasks reveal the same thing, which is that the longer duration, lower intensity cardio also significantly improves performance.

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Now, does that mean that you can do six rounds of six seconds of sprinting with a minute in between or 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and get the same effect on brain performance?

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Well, if you're just looking at overall improvements in performance, so for instance, the percentage of information that you learn, if you do or you don't do the exercise, or if you compare those two forms of exercise that I just mentioned, In that sense, yes, it really doesn't make a difference, which may have you scratching your head, but in a few moments, I'll explain why that is.

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On the other hand, different forms of exercise, of course, impact our bodily health differently. Higher intensity, shorter duration exercise, of course, impacts things like VO2 max and which circulating hormones and neuromodulators are going to be present very differently. than longer duration, lower intensity exercise.

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So too, if you have people do single joint isolation resistance training exercises, like a single leg leg extension or both legs leg extension versus 10 sets of 10 in a squat exercise, you're going to see very different specific adaptations at the physical level, at the bodily level. But in every case,

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where you explore the acute, the immediate changes that occur in brain output and function, after people do that sort of exercise, you're going to see significant increases.

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When one does physical exercise, short duration, high intensity, cardio, or higher intensity resistance training, single joint training, compound training, single joint isolation exercises, compound exercises, one sees these increases in function. brain performance, at least acutely in the immediate stage after the training.

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So we have to ask ourselves, why is it, how is it that all these different forms of exercise are positively impacting brain performance? And the answer is very simple and fortunately gives us tremendous leverage over our exercise and how to impact our brain health. And the answer is, arousal.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Martha Beck. Dr. Martha Beck did her undergraduate master's and PhD training at Harvard University.

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For me, that means being clear-eyed. People who listen to this podcast know that I came up through neuroscience studying a number of things, but the visual system. And these two little bits in the front of our skull are pieces of our brain. They're the only pieces of our brain outside of our skull. And yes, they may be the windows to the soul if people want to refer to them that way.

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But to me, just feeling like my eyes are clear. And there's a certain... tone or something that I'm like, okay, like, I'm all there.

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Yeah, and I think it's the Buddhist that talked about, you know, it's someone who's at the level of their – their eyes are at the level of their skin. So like right there as opposed to sunken back into their eyes. Yes. You know, and then of course some people are like really forward leaning. That's so interesting.

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And I also happen to work on the intersection between the visual system and the autonomic. You know, so, you know, stress or calm. And I think what that's referring to, and I'm speculating here, is where we are alert but calm. So we're present, alert, but calm.

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And of course that controls pupil size and all of this stuff I do believe has been understood in other traditions and ancient traditions through a kind of unconscious genius where they're recognizing all the symbols integrated of clarity of the eyes and level of the skin. And of course we can measure the stuff in the lab, but that's just isolating variables.

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BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school, but pretty soon I realized that doing regular therapy is extremely important to our overall health.

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So for me, it's looking in the mirror and like, okay, my eyes are clear.

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It's like a retraction of our humanness. That's fascinating. I mean, I don't ever recall as a kid, you know, my dad or my mom or anyone telling me like where to place my vision.

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And I'm probably guilty of being more expressive, emotional, effusive than certainly the – a traditional male stereotype. Like if I love something, people are gonna hear about it. And I'm not shy about the fact that thinking about Costello or my graduate advisor or people I love, like I'll well up and I'm okay with that.

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I think – well, to flip that one around, do you think that that's a real thing that – I have no idea. Through cultural conditioning that men and women tend to kind of be either more – I don't know. There's no language for this.

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There are essentially three things that go into great therapy. First of all, you need to have great rapport with a therapist. So you need to be comfortable with that person. You need to be able to trust them and talk to them about all the issues that are relevant to you. Second, and this is what people normally think of when they think of a great therapist,

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Very tactical.

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It's like taking what's out there and holding it in. I actually can do it. I know how to do this.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

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Yeah. I probably just learned how to do it, right? Because I'm comfortable in a lot of different environments. There are certainly environments I don't want to find myself in again or in the future for the first time. But yeah, I'm very... very aware what that distinct change in internal state that accompanies that.

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But I have paper and pen here, and it's okay because the art of podcasting in my opinion, is that we can spin a couple different plates and return to them because it's like conversation. Otherwise we might as well be on a highly produced traditional media show and that's not what this is. So we're back. So I look in the mirror and I see, I'm like clear, like I'm clear and present.

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And of course, for those listening, you should all be doing this exercise for you, right? Yes. Okay. Okay.

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It's just pretty funny because I definitely have my ideal wardrobe, which is very sparse. I've always owned 20 or so of these button-down black shirts for work purposes. I like T-shirts that are super soft. And because I have a short torso and long arms, they have to fit right. So I find the ones that fit right. It's a nightmare trying to get them. But once I get them, I adore them because –

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I always own two belts or so, one watch, black jeans. The shorts I like, I get teased for wearing mailman shorts, but they're actually the Costco purchased mail or like Kmart purchased like mail person shorts. They fit best for me. And I've always worn Adidas. So I'm happy there.

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that therapist needs to provide you support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, excellent therapy has to provide very useful insights, insights that you can apply to be better, not just in your emotional life, in your relationship life, but also your relationship to yourself.

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Oh, yeah. I own a pair of proper leather shoes. I have a suit. I actually own a tuxedo. Oh, my. I own those things. And I like my closet. I've always liked it. It feels very safe in there. I like it. And then I've always kept a couple photographs of people that I love in my closet.

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It's my sister.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

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It's my grandfather. And then I think that's it. Apologies to my parents. Apologies to my parents and anyone else. Just forgive me. Okay. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1602.98

Well, the work part of my life, quote unquote work, is like reading and teaching and talking about stuff on the internet, which is podcasting. Mm-hmm. But what I got a flash of is I'd want to work on my fish tanks with my kids.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

162.404

BetterHelp makes it extremely easy to find an excellent therapist for you, one with whom you resonate with, have excellent rapport with, and that can give you those three essential benefits of therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1628.15

I do. Yeah, I've always wanted kids. I've been trying to time that correctly.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1636.171

And with the right person. So, yeah, I like tending to my fish tanks. I have – kept fish tanks since I was a kid. I haven't had one for a few years now, but I like, I'm always setting them up for other people. It's kind of interesting. I always go play in real life. I go see people. I'm like, I'm going to put a fish tank there.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1660.751

I'll show up and I'll be like, I got it. Will you let me? And then I'll set it up. And I love setting up fish tanks. It's like the, who knows?

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1672.27

Realistically?

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1677.214

Two. For some reason, I got obsessed with numbers for a while. But I was thinking like five or something. No, two.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1694.988

Yeah, two feels good.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1697.25

Fair enough. Two feels good. And... Yeah, there's so much life in a fish tank. There's the plants. There's the food. There's how the fish are interacting with one another, who's chasing who, who's nibbling, who's hiding, who's dominant, who's, like, being kind of unruly and, like, you know. I mean, I must have seen the Finding Nemo movie, especially the second one.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1718.685

Like. Like 12 times. Fabulous. Like 12 times. It's crazy. As an adult.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1728.451

So good. Like I just love the personalities. I mean, any movie where Willem Dafoe is the voice of a fish, you're like, okay. I am in. All right. So we tend to the fish tanks, which is great pleasure. And then for me, it's we come here and sit down with you and – Hang out with these guys and my team and share what I know to be really cool, useful, like truly useful practices. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

181.408

Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1816.237

My dad's a theoretical physicist, but he will delight in that. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1833.832

In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day, and I've done that since starting way back in 2012. There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is, but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1848.658

Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources, which allows you to eat enough but not overeat, get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1866.977

Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1884.293

It's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1905.025

So while many supplements out there are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome, AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well-being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1922.253

They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman. There was something that popped to mind. I mean, there are all these little... things that also go into my perfect day that we don't have to go into every detail about like working out and the whole thing.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1941.55

But I just want to maybe mention a point of contrast that served as one of the reasons why I did this practice in the first place was that in real life, I was waking up and sometimes still do wake up with this like underlying like tension, like something's not right. I don't feel good. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't like, but like something's not right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1964.757

And I went through years of kind of like gnawing and scratching at different things that, you know, I quickly discovered, you know, like going out for a couple of drinks with people made me feel worse. I don't judge people who drink whatsoever, I'm like, I don't like this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

197.191

Now, the mattress we sleep on makes an enormous difference in terms of the quality of sleep that we get each night. We need a mattress that is matched to our unique sleep needs, one that is neither too soft nor too hard for you, one that breathes well and that won't be too warm or too cold for you.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

1979.441

Like it doesn't, like I was just, but this unease, it's like a restlessness that lived inside of me for so long and still can surface as a signal that like, this is not the right life. And at that point, I had a laboratory, grants, we're publishing papers, like all these things that I loved doing, And that I loved the trajectory that I took to arrive there and the people that were in my life.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2005.819

But like, I just knew I could just say like, something's not right. And I felt terribly guilty. The reason I'm telling this is I felt terribly guilty. Like I owned a home, right? I was in my mid thirties and it wasn't an expensive home, certainly not by today's standards, but I was able to buy a home on my own. I was... dog.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2023.109

I had, you know, people in my life, but it was like this, it was almost like a gear that was grinding. And that was the stimulus for exploring this perfect day. My life looks completely different now. And it's far from quote unquote perfect, meaning there's still work to do in a lot of domains, a lot. But I feel like the trajectory is right.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

212.495

If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it asks you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2170.16

And he was – Probably true for a lot of higher education institutions. Yeah.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2213.624

Adam, right?

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2215.845

I only know his name through your books, of course, but I feel like I know him a little bit because I love the story about him peeing on the doctor.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2240.021

I want to just... or lack of a better way to put it, double click on two things. First of all, I wonder if we're going to speculate, no need to, but if the perfect day exercise is really about accessing the subconscious.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

228.058

For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I've been sleeping on a Dusk mattress for, gosh, no, more than four years, and the sleep that I've been getting is absolutely phenomenal. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that brief two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized to your unique sleep needs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

23.523

She is also considered one of the foremost experts in the personal development field, having authored many bestselling books, including her upcoming book, Beyond Anxiety. curiosity, creativity and finding your life's purpose. I must say that today's discussion is a truly special one.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2356.37

Right. In my case, again, I loved, and I still love doing science. I mean, my lab is certainly shrunk. I made sure people got placed in jobs and faculty positions, et cetera. I'm still involved in some clinical trials. But one thing that pained me about the work, I'll just come clean about this, this makes my throat lock up a bit is I've been an animal lover since I was a kid. I do eat meat.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2384.882

I eat it from sustainable sources, but you know, not all, but a lot of the work that I did in my laboratory was on animals. And at some point it was approximately halfway through my first position. I realized I was like, I, I, I don't like this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2404.93

And we could talk all day about animal research, non-animal research. I decided to work on humans instead because they can consent and they house themselves. But, you know, so there were some pain points, but I think my unconscious was pulling at me. Yeah. Like, this isn't good. This isn't good. And for me. Yeah. And I do think that

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2430.546

the conscious mind and the logical mind, as you're referring to it, it's very tactical. And part of the problem is it works so well, works in quotes, to move us forward on metrics related to that. But I mean, there are very few people that I know who are truly aligned with their, I guess what you've called essential self.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2453.47

One who I'm fortunate to be good friends with, he just so happens to be famous for lack of a better word, who resonates with a lot of what we're discussing is the, great Rick Rubin, the music producer who's produced all these different types of music. And one thing that's really interesting about Rick, I've spent a lot of time with Rick and we communicate all the time.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2473.378

And one thing that is very interesting about him is he has incredible powers of observation. He can really feel the energy of a musical artist or, and he's produced other things too. He does great documentary. He's got his own great podcast. But he doesn't get absorbed by it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

248.729

Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get 25% off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2491.138

And I wanted to talk to you about this because I, you know, I think for people that are very feeling, very sentient or really in touch with that, the ability to like feel music, to feel other people's emotions, to really – that's a beautiful life, to taste food. But there's a – threshold beyond which we kind of lose ourselves in the experience of others and what's going on.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2518.205

Rick can go right up to that line and really see it and enjoy it, but it doesn't absorb him in a way that he has a place that he returns to that's in him. And the reason I discovered this is I said, wait, you don't drink alcohol. He said, no. I said, no drugs. He said, no. Doesn't judge it, but he doesn't do it. I said, did you ever? He said, no.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2536.691

And I said, who comes up through music and never takes a sip of alcohol?

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2541.733

Goes to college and never took a sip of alcohol, tried any drug. And again, I don't judge. I've talked about psychedelics on this podcast. I've talked about my own relationship to those, what I think are very interesting clinical trials and things of that sort. I think there's tremendous potential there.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2557.657

But what is it to be able to experience life in the richest way, but make sure that we don't get lost in feeling or in thought. It's like this ability to move back and forth seems to be the most, the best definition of like a great life, in my opinion, because we need to do things each day.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2684.497

It's like the ultimate parent.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2695.267

Have not, but I'm learning more about internal family systems models. I learned about this first in the context of visiting a trauma healing center. Yeah, that's great for trauma. And then people are now applying this to addiction as well.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2709.06

I'll get his name from you later.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

271.607

Now, proper hydration is critical for the optimal functioning of all the cells in your body. And that's especially true for the neurons, the nerve cells. In fact, we know that even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish both cognitive and physical performance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2776.118

How do you go about doing that? And one of the reasons I'm asking this is because I think everyone, including myself, would do well to be able to access this compassionate witness self. But also because...

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2788.391

So many people are on social media nowadays where you can almost feel yourself getting pulled down these trajectories, like the gravitational pull of a battle or a video or even something that's delightful. But then you find like two hours went by and you were overconsumed and undercreated in some sense.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2810.536

It goes nowhere.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2811.977

You know, this sort of goes nowhere. So do you have a practice that you use to make sure that you're in that place?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

284.373

So to make sure that I'm getting proper hydration and electrolytes, I personally dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning and I drink that or sip that across the first half hour of the day or so.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2954.043

So the state is what's key.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2956.306

And it is so – it has so much fun in this world. And so you can walk around in that state.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2964.637

Sure. You can – so – To be sure I understand. So say I wake up in the morning and I'm just like not feeling right or something triggers me or, I don't know, just like I'm off center.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

297.275

And then I also make it a point to drink another packet of element dissolved in an equal amount of water, so 16 to 32 ounces, at some other point during the day, and maybe even a third if I'm exercising and or sweating a lot. I should mention that Element tastes absolutely delicious. My favorite flavor is watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry flavor, the citrus flavor.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2983.338

You take that sensation of suffering. Yeah.

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Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

2989.053

And you don't fear it. You don't amplify it. You just kind of pay attention to it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3018.362

You. Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3086.369

Yeah, people in pain are usually agitated and grumpy. So it's the inverse of that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3094.917

Yeah, I love this. I mean, in some sense, the words like self-parenting keep coming up in my mind because a lot of this is about learning to parent ourselves from the inside. Yeah. And I do think that most... We hear about inner child stuff and I think inner child work is very interesting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3111.942

I also think that as a biologist who spent the early part of my career on developmental neurobiology, like the same neural stuff is repurposed in adulthood. Like that's something that it's kind of obvious, but we overlook.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3129.87

Right, right, right. You know, but the notion that like our attachments when we're young, somehow that like those neural circuits are set aside. So then we can form more mature adult attachments. You know, it's like, no, it's crazy. We repurpose them. So we're working in an adult landscape with child-based algorithms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3148.684

And depending on how childhood went, you know, that either can be spectacular or so-so or a complete disaster. Usually it's a combination.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

316.461

Basically, I like all the flavors. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. And now for my discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. Dr. Martha Beck, welcome.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3235.221

Yeah, no, it's looking a little sketchy right now. I mean, things are tense. It sounds like it starts with... self-love, compassion, like only from that place of compassionate witness, self with a capital S, excuse me, can we be at our best for others?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3304.595

Let's, if you would, let's drill into this a little bit more because this is a high level, but at the same time, basic and yet abstract concept. And it's not often on this podcast that we talk about abstract concepts. We probably don't do it enough. We get like, I like to talk about protocols. You get your sunlight on clear days, you know, and I love that stuff too.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3328.607

But as probably people realize by now, I... I think a great life is bridging as many things, at least for me, as possible, and seeing the overlap in the Venn diagrams. It's the only part of us that's real, meaning the other parts are just conditioned.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

340.032

I'm so excited. I mean, I don't know how to convey to the people listening and watching just how excited I am. I have very few heroes in life, but you are one of them. It's true. That does not compute. It's true. I won't name all of them, but you, the great Oliver Sacks, are among the people that have really influenced me so much in terms of the things I do.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3420.527

Well, it's interesting because a few years ago, so many concepts that I was intrigued by, breath work, for instance, psychedelics, meditation. I mean, now people get federal grants to study this stuff.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3437.552

And we do reductionist work to try and understand. In fact, I had to disguise breath work as respiration physiology, which we did. And we did a clinical trial. And, you know, lo and behold, certain patterns of breathing shift your internal state and your sleep and your anxiety. It's like a giant, but it was, it was scary territory for a while. And, um,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3457.972

And now, you know, psychedelics have kind of broken through as I mean, I mean, I just have to say this with like while touching my forehead and like that. They adjust neuromodulators just like, but differently than certain drugs that adjust neuromodulators and everyone accepted.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3475.906

So the idea of changing neuromodulators to change conscious experience and in that altered experience to be able to achieve neuroplasticity is like, it's also a big duh. Of course it works that way. But six years ago, you'd get fired from the university if you said, well, maybe psilocybin could be an interesting compound for... you know, depressed people.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3499.653

And by the way, I'm not suggesting everyone run out and take a bunch of psilocybin, especially if you're depressed.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3511.097

Right. And if you're, you know, more gun-shy on these things, contact a local university. They're likely doing a clinical trial on this. We can provide some links to clinical trials. I think the data are incredibly interesting. In any case,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3526.227

And I guess the point is that I feel like academia is kind of coming around, probably due to the suffering of people in it, where then they know somebody who achieved some relief through meditation or some benefits of meditation. So now everyone, I think, accepts like meditation can be very useful for lowering stress and altering conscious experience. This is not new stuff, as everyone knows.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3552.137

It's gone back thousands of years. So it sounds like Getting into the capital S self, the compassionate witness, is step number one. And so I just want to make sure that we make clear how one does that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3569.33

Okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

369.775

the ways I try and think, the ways I try to not think at times. And your life story is an amazing one. So we have a lot to cover today. So I'm not going to spend any more time talking about why I feel that way, because it's going to just become apparent in our discussion. But I do want to say that you have really been ahead of your time.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3697.235

And every day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3701.38

Yeah, this is very relevant to me. I have always wondered about like, do you push back against the feeling? Do you live with the feeling? Do you let it amplify? There's so much contradiction inside of the typical discussion of these kinds of things. That's one of the reasons I love your work so much is that you don't tell people what to do, but you provide paths. I hope so. Absolutely, you do.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3728.983

Absolutely. I'd like to talk about two things. You know, before I came in here, I did a little meditation. I do this before every episode, but today I just, it like took only like a minute because it came to me so fast, which is the two words that popped to mind were, you know, what's real, what is true.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3749.279

I mean, I think so much of what we're talking about in so much of life is like, what's real, what's true. Certainly out in the world, but like in us.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3759.485

What I'm hearing is that at some level, we need to not trust our thinking. But of course, there are times when we need to trust our thinking. And then, of course, we're receiving messages about what's real, what's not real, what's true, what's not true, sometimes about us. I mean, there's all this childhood programming. How do we start to sort through this?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3776.377

I'm guessing that it has something to do with being in that compassionate witness place. But let's say what you've experienced in your life, I know because you've written and talked about this, and I certainly have now that by some interesting twist of fate. I'm a public facing person. People saying things about you or about me that are not true. Or that are judgments that don't feel good. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3803.474

And we are not alone in this. You don't have to be public facing in order to experience this. People all the time are being told they are stupid. Sometimes they're being told they are brilliant and they know they're not brilliant. This can go in every direction. How are we supposed to hold –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3819.272

the narratives, the voices that we hear in our head and outside us in a way that really allows us to be our best essential selves.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

39.612

I've long benefited from Martha's teachings, and I assure you that during today's episode, you will benefit from Martha's teachings. She describes and we explore practices in real time that will allow you to truly understand what is most important to you and what you ought to spend your time pursuing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

392.247

I mean, you're triple degreed from Harvard, you have these academic credentials, and yet you were one of the first people to be public facing about the mind-body connection in a way that is operationalized, what we sometimes call in and around this podcast protocols. And you've offered some practices that have absolutely transformed my life and other people's lives.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

3944.658

It wasn't for you. No.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4105.077

All right, so it sounds like challenging or sitting with doctrine and labels and stories that we've heard and that maybe we've internalized. Oh, we've internalized them, yeah. Yeah, and systematically exploring how those make us feel in our body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4124.465

I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4141.775

And by now there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

415.78

And I gained them through reading your books and That's not a standard book advertisement, but all of your books have been transformative for me. One of the exercises that has had a profound effect on my life is the perfect day exercise.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4162.006

Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4176.731

So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, You never get tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4195.222

I also really like doing yoga nidra or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest for about 10 or 20 minutes because it is a great way to restore mental and physical vigor without the tiredness that some people experience when they wake up from a conventional nap. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com slash Huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4214.454

Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. I recall the inverse of the perfect day exercise was another one that I did, which was like, just call it what it was. It was like the sucky day, like the shitty day, right? Or just where you'd imagine something really terrible. and then how it would cause the body to contract.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4237.747

And to recognize, you know, the other side of the coin, right? And just learning that relationship between the body and thought.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4247.752

I mean, I can say from my own experience that one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was teaching myself to be more resilient to certain forms of stress.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4261.079

One of the worst mistakes I ever made. Say more. I mean, I, and my lab studies stress and I talk about stress relief and physiological size are a great way to, you know, reduce real-time stress. And I stand by that. So I'm not talking about that. I stand by meditation and saunas and all the things that make us feel, vacation, the things that relax us.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4281.307

So I'm not saying the ability to modulate stress is bad. incredibly powerful and useful. I believe that for sure. But when I was a kid, I wasn't the kid that was going to hold the firecracker to the last second. I wasn't the kid that would do the really daring thing. I had friends like that. And I felt kind of sheepish about that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4312.419

in the then very parentless community of skateboarders that a lot of us were really wild we were very free which I love the freedom part but there was a lot of mayhem and craziness especially back then yeah and it's a beautiful culture I'm still friends with a lot of those folks but

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4332.316

Those cultures split off basically into thirds over time, about a third debtor in jail, about a third doing incredibly well personally and professionally, incredibly well, and then a third doing well, but they're not still as ambitious about that. They're more focused on their personal lives, and I hope that's what they want to be doing. Yeah. Um, that's kind of how it broke down.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

434.305

And when I first read about it, I thought, what could this possibly be? And as I recall, it involved taking a little bit of time, maybe 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, and just sitting or lying down, closing one's eyes, and just imagining with no limitations one's perfect day.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4354.201

But I remember as a young kid and then in that culture, like learning to push myself past the feeling of like, this is dangerous to the point where as I got older and my body eventually got stronger because back then I was always getting hurt, which is why I left that sport. It wasn't very good. I, for the record, wasn't very good. Um, good enough, but not, not. not where I wanted to be.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4375.721

That over time, I remember when I started doing science, I realized this is crazy. Skateboarding, you fall, you hurt yourself so badly, you can't do it anymore. That doesn't happen with studying. So I'll just study until I collapse. I'll just work until I'm sick. I'll just, you know, like... That person down the hall puts in 80 hours.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4396.618

Well, then I'll do 100, and I'm not a competitive person by nature. Or even worse, you know, in my mid-40s, getting into, like, stupid stuff, like cage egg sick great white shark diving to the point where I had an air failure.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4411.314

And this is all – You know, this whole thing. And then coming back from that, I'm like, what am I doing? And what had happened is I learned to override the signals of the body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4420.56

And it was like, when is enough enough? It's like when the reaper comes, you know? And so I think that if we don't listen to the signals that our body sends and we learn to override them, repeatedly and systematically, we can place ourselves into real psychological, emotional, and physical danger. And I just like, I don't know why, I just felt like this was a need to do this in order to grow up.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4447.889

And now I try and do the exact opposite. It's like, and then I feel bad. I feel kind of lazy. I'm like, I'm not like running at 5 a.m. I'm like sleeping at

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4458.271

I'm doing yoga nidra. I'm doing yoga nidra at 7 a.m. because I didn't feel I slept enough. And then I have friends in the public facing health space that are like, they push so hard. I'm like, I'm lazy. And then, so it can go too far.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

457.421

And what's so wild about this exercise is that several, not all, but several of the things that I imagined in that exercise have amazingly come to be reality.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4639.612

It was like the stupidest thing. I remember thinking like, what am I doing? And of course, we used it to get virtual reality for our lab. We did a bunch of things that I thought were useful that we transmuted into studies on stress. And so there was always a purpose and a story that could justify being there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4656.409

Yeah. And one that was really rooted in goodness and adventure. I love adventure and I'm super curious. Well,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4709.076

Enough.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4710.377

Yeah. That's a perfect segue, but before I move on, I want to make sure that I linked back what you said because I think it's exceptionally valuable about what's real, what's true. To really evaluate what's true, you need to sit. Or maybe one can learn to do this while in motion and sense within one's body what feels liberating, opening versus what feels contracting. Is that right?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

491.57

Okay, well, I'm giving you a notification right now because at the end of that exercise, and I ended up doing it several times. I do too. I do it all the time. Okay, that's good to know. I want to know about the frequency there. Was, you know, I'd love to sit down and talk to Martha Beck, what I wouldn't do. So I'm in a pinch me moment right now.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4952.791

Love it. I'm going to mention Rick Rubin again. A few years back, I called him up and I said, like, Rick, you're not going to believe this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4962.057

And I relayed to him a story about someone that I knew really well and this, like, very, like, just kind of wild set of discoveries that someone else had unearthed about their life being completely different than it had been presented and their business was a big fail. Like, the whole thing just collapsed. And And Rick just wrote back. He said, back to nature, the only truth.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

4990.413

Like that's very Rick. Like he's, you know, that's how he talks. Exactly. He said, he said, well, I actually, sorry. It was preceded by, he said, I said, did you read this? Do you see this? I can't believe this. And I'm like, you know, this person really well. And like, I can't like for a very long time. And he just said, it's all lies. Back to nature, the only truth.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5012.849

And that just got tattooed in my brain because so much of what we see and the shock and I can't believe it. And I think he was referring to something similar. He also has said, and you're going to get a kick out of this, I think, so Rick loves professional wrestling. He watches 10 hours a week of professional wrestling. Why?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5032.781

Well, first of all, he believes that it's the only thing that humans have created that's real. Why? Because everyone agrees that it's not real.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5041.107

It's fake. And that he likes that no one gets hurt. I mean, people actually can get hurt, but that no one's trying to actually hurt the other person. They're collaborating in this. kind of Shakespearean dance that they do. And you have the different characters. And so I went to see professional wrestling with Rick thinking like, what am I doing here?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5058.918

Like it was like loud and the flames and all this is like not a scene I would normally take myself to on a Friday. And it was so much fun, mostly because of how delighted Rick was in seeing it and his son as well. So- We can distinguish or like really identify what's true through this practice.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

511.207

It's wild. It's like reality weaving back on itself.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5133.419

It'll protect you from cancer.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5136.481

Well, it turns out that people that run kind of more towards autoimmune conditions, like people who have skin conditions that are autoimmune based, have fewer skin cancers. Yay! Because the immune system is combating all these invaders.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5151.654

So there's a, yeah, if there's an upside, and this is the basis of a lot of the logic related to immunotherapies for cancers is trying to have the immune system fight off these mutations that are always occurring in the background. So I'm not trying to take away from the suffering it's created, but that's an upside.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

518.295

Thank you. I'm moved by that. Let's just talk about this exercise for a second. Clearly, we could come up with scientific explanations for why it would work. The brain is a predictive machine. Once it understands that something might be possible, maybe it looks for avenues for that unconsciously. We could come up with a whole narrative around that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5277.662

No, not if you're talking about dogs and feeling.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5281.186

You might make me cry because I'm thinking about, no, because I think I can sense it. Yeah. I think I can sense it. And forgive me if I'm like, you know, like now sounding like totally crazy. If anyone's listening, like this, I will say, and I have a... I'm just going to be blunt. I got a lot of training in neuroscience. I got decades of training in it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5300.435

And I'll tell you, the notion of energy is not mysterious at all. I mean, neurons are electricity and chemical exchange. And that happens locally and it happens at a distance.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5321.531

And the really forward-thinking neuroscientists are starting to put multiple people into scanners and putting people in scanners in different locations. And I know it sounds like people are going, oh, no, like, what are you talking about? This is like spoon-bending stuff. No.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5334.878

The idea that thought and emotion at one location can impact thought and location at another one is that magnetoreception has been published in the journal Science. Yeah. So we're not outside the bounds of reality. We are like actually finally as a field starting to acknowledge that this stuff exists and starting to poke and prod around in there. But people have known about this.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5356.251

So for you, the sensing of your dog passing or you can feel them present.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

540.926

But just for sake of those listening, what is this exercise? How would you suggest somebody try it?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5491.394

And the instruments we have to measure things are just not there yet. But the same was said about most everything that has been clearly discovered and is rock solid over the last 50 plus years, at least in neuroscience. I can't help it. just briefly share when I put Costello down. Cause I did that myself, which sucked.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5516.242

But I didn't want to, I didn't, I mean, so I, the vets, they came to the house, but it was at home and I was right there. I didn't do, I didn't do the injection. No, no, no. I originally, I, I thought I would because unfortunately, because of my previous job, I had to do that a number of times. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5533.829

No, so, but what was interesting is, you know, like he let out a big like sigh right there at the end, but the wildest part of it was, and I swear it sounds like I'm making this up, but at the moment he went, I felt my heart heat up. I thought I was gonna be crushed like a broken heart. And I swear it felt as if he was giving me all this energy back.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5557.522

And it's because I had been spending so much time. He was up in the middle of the night a lot. He must've had some dementia or that kind of thing. And I mean, I had that dog on everything. I was injecting him with testosterone for the last part. Made him a lot healthier, folks. Don't let your dog breed, you know, indiscriminately. But like, I've got my theories about, you know,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5577.487

All the stuff that hormones and animals that a lot of the vets are aligned with me on this one. Um, talk to your vet, talk to a progressive vet. Um, you know, I had him on a bunch of different drugs. I had him, you know, he was, he was really unhappy. So letting it, it was the right thing to do. And, uh, I'll stop talking about it cause I'll get, I'll get too worked up. But, um, yeah. Forgive me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5598.918

But that feeling, it was like, whoa. And I can still feel it. It's like he gave something back that now I think enough time has passed. I go get another dog. It was almost like, oh, here's all this resource and like gratitude. And so these things sound kind of woo, right? Could you do an experiment where you put me in the lab while I go through that? Sure. Would you see huge physiological changes?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

56.516

You will hear a rich discussion about how to frame the thoughts and the emotions around any topic, including pain points in life, as well as your goals and the things that you are in pursuit of. You will also learn how to figure out exactly what is most essential to you and indeed how to explore what Dr. Martha Beck calls your essential self.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5619.874

Sure. I don't see the point of that kind of experiment. Because I think enough people have experienced these kinds of things that it's not necessary. In any case, I want to talk about integrity and your book, Way of Integrity. You ran a very interesting experiment that, frankly, is going to sound a little scary to some people. They don't have to do it. And maybe reflexive to other people.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5649.813

which is, I think it was one year of no lying.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5655.354

But like no lying of any kind, not even to yourself. No, especially not to myself.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5662.596

And previously on the podcast, we had my colleague, Dr. Anna Lemke, who runs our dual diagnosis addiction clinic. She's done a tremendous service to the world talking about all the various kinds of addiction, addiction as a disease, yes, but also something that people can overcome. And one of the things that I love so much about Ana's message, she wrote the book, Dopamine Nation. Oh, I love that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5684.72

Yeah, wonderful book. She talks about how recovered addicts are actually her heroes because they've learned to navigate this internal process that most people perhaps who aren't addicts or don't think they are, are constantly being yanked around by these dopamine systems, but they've learned to conquer their own dopamine systems So they represent the heroes of her world.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5706.469

And I love that model because we tend to look at addicts and think about it as like, There's all this judgment on it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5778.833

Until it becomes the source of pain.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5809.336

Yeah, I've spent a lot of my life there, I'll confess, and it's super unpleasant and it's always led to pain. like shitty things.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5824.409

And we tell ourselves stories like, well, if we achieve certain things, then we'll be in a better position to do more for other people. Like there's the martyrdom version of it too.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5834.338

The reason I brought up Ana was she was the first to alert me to these studies that have been done about how myelination and growth of the prefrontal cortex is actually accelerated when people tell the truth, especially around truths that are somewhat uncomfortable. And it's a beautiful literature that's small but starting to really emerge. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5854.105

And a big part of the recovery from addiction is people first – like acknowledging the truth to themselves and then to other people. And, you know, again, it's all of that's kind of shrouded by how we think about addicts. Like, you know, sadly in any major city and even small towns now, you can see the bent over, you know, like fentanyl addicts.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5877.652

And like, we judge, we're like, oh, you know, or we say it's so sad or, but that's just, you know, you know, an example of how far gone people can get in that particular addiction. Ana offers an interesting idea, which is that the more we tell these little micro truths, the more connected to reality we are. And in the way of integrity, you talk about this experiment that you did.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

5902.807

My first integrity cleanse. So an integrity cleanse. So maybe you could explain what it is. And, um, It sounds incredibly scary. It's not just the telling the truth part. It's the realizing the truth part.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6097.454

Of any kind, even a little micro. Like when are you going to be home and you know it's 12 minutes and you say 10?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6114.128

I would sort of try to soften the truth. Did it mean also telling every truth that was in your head? No. Or you would keep certain things to yourself?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

615.322

For me, the first thing I hear is like, Just feeling how comfortable my body is on the bed. Something that I don't do enough.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6150.196

What Ana has said, and I think in the backdrop of what you're saying, is that everybody – does these little micro adjustments or, and you've said, constantly, and you've said that this is largely to smooth social interactions, that most of lying is to smooth social interactions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6223.636

That came to you as a realization in that year.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6227.22

Okay. It must have been in your unconscious someplace prior.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6231.144

There had never been a kind of like, knock, knock, hey.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6292.78

I expected you to be like, it was horrible. You're like, no, better and better.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6304.089

And the part that intrigues me is, the moment is like the losing of friends, like losing of people and the structures that we relied on also for safety. That's gotta be hard.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

632.267

Yeah, someone next to me breathing and they're still asleep.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

638.879

Well, if it was like my bulldog Costello that's snoring. I'm going to get another dog soon. So I would like a dog that breathes with less snoring than Costello. Although I must say I miss his – Bulldogs. His like incredibly deep snores. The early versions of this podcast, the early episodes, we kept him in the room snoring. And by the way, the watering up of my eyes, these are truly tears of joy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6452.432

Did you feel as if you had to accomplish certain things, degrees, et cetera, first in order to allow yourself this? Because I hear this a lot. And in the backdrop of this entire conversation, I have one little piece of neural real estate, which is devoted to the audience that is saying, okay, I can do these things once I have a job, once I have blank, once I have the resources.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6478.537

But at the same time, I do want to highlight for people that Everything that we've talked about in terms of practices and things to do, you just do them. There's no purchase. It's inside of us. There's no looking to something in a package or in even a program. It's all within us. So it can be done at really anywhere and with any amount of resources or lack thereof.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6539.24

Okay, there's that. So you have the capacity for extreme resilience.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6546.229

And it perhaps took you too far.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6606.672

And inevitably, a much kinder, more generous version of ourselves emerges when we're living our truth. I mean, it's a foregone conclusion, but still worth stating. Yeah, I can personally say that most of my suffering has been the consequence of the fact that I love love. And I'm blessed with many great friends and things of that sort, business partners, etc.,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6635.934

But I have a tendency to get into relationships quickly and ending them feels near impossible. And this has caused me and, you know, and also others too much suffering.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6646.916

You know, and so a lot of that is the reason I raised this is that it's about holding two truths at the same time, which feel incompatible. On the one hand, really loving and caring about someone.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

666.231

And I said at the beginning of the podcast,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6663.197

And at the same time, knowing that the loving, caring thing to do is to go separate ways. And it's this relationship to loss that I sort of can't accept or haven't been able to. Like, I can accept that people die. All three of my academic advisors are wonderful people. Suicide, cancer, cancer. Like, so I had to come to the conclusion pretty early on in my academic career, like –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6687.338

wow, like I'm the common denominator. I joke, you know, like, and it took me a long time to realize like, this might not be my fault. You know, I know it's crazy. Like how would that, you know, but I think that it also woke me up to the idea, you know, like life as we know it in this life ends. And so to try and make the most of it, but the idea that people would move apart.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

669.955

podcast I said listen I have a bulldog he's getting toward the end of his life so we're gonna keep him in the room and so when you hear that breathing in the background that snoring let's call it what it is he's in here like so sorry not sorry so anyway so yeah so there's some bulldog breathing you can have as many dogs in the room as you want just listen and maybe you hear birds outside maybe you hear the ocean maybe you hear wind maybe you hear people talking or the noise of traffic just just listen for a minute

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6712.607

Even in circumstances where death doesn't separate them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6717.453

To me, it's like, it's so painful.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6727.004

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this has roots in all sorts of things in me, of course. But the reason I raise it is that I think that when we have two incompatible truths, that's when we feel stuck. Like we love people, we want to take care of them. Maybe we want them to remain in our lives, but we have to, like the letting go process sucks.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6772.774

100%.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6906.94

That's very useful. Thank you. And I know it will be very useful to many people. What is the suggestion for people that are trying to figure out what they want or need or both?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

6966.488

Yeah, it's like this isn't safe.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

703.489

Yeah, I like the sound of kids playing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7049.022

Yeah, it's caused me and I think others a lot of suffering because I think what ends up happening is that when we get separation from that person, then we do a little bit of self-recovery, but then it's like all fractured.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7064.585

And repeat, right, exactly. What you just described is extremely helpful. I'm curious in your role as a coach to many people. Mm-hmm. how often are romantic relationships, partnership type things, whatever form that takes for people, how often is that like the bulk of what people struggle with, at least in terms of what they bring to the table?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7088.444

Or is it more often, I don't like my job, I'm in the wrong life? Professionally, you know, if you had to give us like the non-peer reviewed study, but like kind of crude breakdown,

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7108.754

Like the whole thing. Oh, great.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7157.082

No. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I feel like professionally, it's like there's like a gravitational pull. Like I wanted to get into tropical fish when I was a kid. And I was like, tropical fish, I would spend all day at the tropical fish store. Then it was birds. Then it was skateboarding. Then it was, you know, I wanted to be a firefighter, like whatever.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7176.136

Eventually it was neuroscience and it was podcasting. You know, it's just like, I can't miss anything. And when I say that, I mean, I can't keep myself from doing what I really want. I would say likewise with friendships, I'm fortunate to have a great relationship to my biological family. It was really rocky for a lot of years, but it's like the work has paid off and they've done a lot of work.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

718.797

You know, I'm a Californian at heart. I like it in the 70s and 80s. Perfect. Not too humid. Yeah. It's weird that a don't jumps in, but there's something about the sound of airplanes flying over.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7201.145

In romantic partnership, it's like a carve out. It's been much more challenging. I've had some amazing partners and partnerships, like amazing. I'm still on excellent terms with many of them. And then I've had some like really, really brutal, like barbed wire, just like, and you know, I've had to take a look at my role in that too, right? So in this case, for me, it's like a carve out.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7226.185

I think of it as like this, like wedge shaped carve out. It just seems so much more challenging. But I think in talking with you today, it's clear that it's because of this thing of like, it's not, I'm not approaching it from the standpoint of like, I want to do this and it's good for me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7244.212

to be frank. Whereas in the work domain, it's like what feels good ends up being really good for me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7325.485

Right. Well, and that's often the case, right? And I think so this notion of others getting hurt when we make the choice that's most in line with our own integrity, whether it's relationship or family or the decision to move or leave a job, how do you sit with that? I mean, how does one sit with that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7344.796

I mean, I think I have clearly internalized some script that says if someone else is really upset, even, and obviously the right thing is often not the thing that makes people feel best, et cetera, et cetera, but how do you work with that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

735.824

It always depresses me. It must be some parrot association. Something like that. Sometime like, I don't like that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

743.763

Bird chirping. Who doesn't like birds chirping?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7439.487

Yes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7443.57

Yeah. The compassionate thing is to do the right thing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7493.702

Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at that, but I did. I don't know. I find it hilarious. I mean, sorry. Not sorry. That was just nothing to do but laugh there. Goodness. Yeah, I think this notion of things ending because we realized that we were telling lies.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7516.458

And gosh, it even hurts to say. Yeah. You know, it's like... Because we weren't trying to tell lies.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7524.368

We didn't know we were telling lies. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7528.911

To me, that often grows from what I think of as empathy. Probably not, certainly not the best form of empathy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7537.717

But I think that there's a human phenotype that I'm familiar with where we We feel other people's emotions, which I think is healthy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7547.442

Can be healthy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7549.003

And we love seeing people enjoy. Yeah. And we delight in it. So it feels good to us.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7557.166

To, you know, feed this addiction. Oh, I know the feeling. It's not like, it's like, oh, here I am, Marta. I'm like, I'm bleeding out, bleeding out, bleeding out. But it's not in line with this essential self.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7567.17

And here, I guess the little vignette that's related to this is that I do think there's one very healthy form of this, which is I believe, at least for me, with a dog – I like other animals too, but with a dog, when we love them – we are seamlessly attached to their love of us. And so loving them and empathizing with them means like double the love.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7590.802

Like we love them and we can feel their love and it's like a perfect, it just feels like a perfect circle. And with people, that can happen too, I imagine. I've felt that a few times. I certainly feel that in my friendships. I feel that with my sister. And I've felt it in a few of my romantic relationships. But The empathy for the other's pleasure can go too far.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

76.409

Those deep rooted desires that are unique to you and your history and what will make your life most fulfilling. By the end of today's episode, you will be armed with new intellectual and practical knowledge, and you will be able to adopt the best possible stance for you as you navigate forward in your life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7615.782

And then when we, quote unquote, lose ourselves, I think it's because there's a component of ourselves that's like not attached to the part that still has our own needs.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

784.209

Yeah, it's my partner next to me, my... Dog is, you know, I told myself I wasn't going to get another bulldog.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7866.383

I love that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7886.715

It's so interesting because I feel like in the domain of work and with my friends and largely with family, giving feels great and then people are sated and then they go on their way. But I noticed a contrast with romantic partnerships when, as I've said, I maintain good relationships with a couple of Girlfriends that I had, you know, in some cases, I'm good friends with their husbands.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7914.636

Like they actually, one just came and visited with her sister and her kid recently. And like on just great platonic terms. But for years, I like...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7924.429

worry about them but I felt like I could still feel the energetic pull even though they weren't asking for anything right and then when I attended their wedding this particular person's wedding I was like oh I was like my work is done yeah and I got to enjoy and still get to enjoy the friendship with the whole family yeah

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

794.868

But I think I'm going to get another bulldog. You are. They're the best.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

7943.029

But it really showed me how much the whole – so much of the relationship had been about like trying to make sure the other person was okay.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

798.05

They're like the essence of efficiency of metabolism, meaning they do as little as possible and they experience as much joy as possible. Oh, that's perfect. They're hedonists when it really comes down to it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8041.445

What a mature and generous thing for them to say. Yeah, they are. It sounds like it. This is your oldest. The contrast, and I think what drives a lot of what we're really talking about here is codependency.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8055.753

Yeah. For those that don't know, we haven't caught on. Right, exactly. Is that sometimes when we... cut people off, or we just say, hey, I can give, but only to this point, or you can get this aspect of me, but not these other aspects, especially if they've been receiving them before. They get pissed.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8079.469

I mean, and it's unclear, especially if the relationship had been different up until then, that, you know, like that's why it sometimes feels unfair to do. It's like, you know, it's one thing to invite someone over for a drink, then to discover that they're an alcoholic, continue to fill their glass. enjoy the exchange and then one day realize they're an alcoholic.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8104.947

And I guess that term isn't used anymore. I've been told by many audience members, forgive me, it's alcohol use disorder.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8112.65

No, quite all right. I think that field of addiction medicine is nascent enough that we're still making the transition. And I don't say this, by the way, for political correctness. I'm not a politically correct person. It's just, I've had to learn to reframe these things for the specific purpose of trying to be more, to bring more people into the conversation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

813.44

And they are capable of protecting if they need to, but I honestly don't care about that. You know, all that stuff, like all that, like my bulldogs, I don't care about any of that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8131.838

Also, I like the sound of, I don't like the idea, but the words alcohol use disorder, the disorder piece is also controversial. But what I love is that as soon as we start to name things and rename things, we're all talking about those things and then there's no way out of the conversation. So that's my kind of jujitsu-ing out of that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8151.546

So that means we have to talk about it, just like autism spectrum disorder or autism or neurotypical, atypical. Well, guess what, folks? Now we're all talking about it and it needs to be talked about. So in any case, at some point, there's the idea like I'm cutting you off. And the person says, but this is what we do. This is the kind of promise that you made.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8173.6

And so then we find ourselves in like the other scripts of like, well, now I'm like, being bad. I'm doing the right thing, but I'm breaking a promise, which we're told from like the time we're little, like you don't do.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8213.432

In the notion of galaxies developing or something like that?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8219.774

Awesome, I am way off.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8222.335

I'm like trying to be Elon Musk here and you're like, no, it's about pigeons, cool.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8228.078

I love pigeons. I even have a pigeon tattoo. Yeah, I do.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

824.754

Yeah, I'm good there.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8251.659

They perseverate.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8337.702

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because with work, it's like I love learning, organizing information, having conversations like this and sharing them with the world. It feels kind of like the relationship to a dog. It's like this reciprocity. And if people don't like it, okay. And if you like it, great. And if you love it, even better. But I would be doing it anyway. I'd be doing it anyway.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

835.973

Yeah. I'm a Wyeth fan.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8359.205

Like there's no feeling of loss. There's no metabolizing of self, any of that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8388.39

And people pay me to do this. And I still can't believe it. I come in here and I talk to my producer, who's also my business partner and my closest friend, Rob. And I'm like, I can't believe they pay us to do this. I can't believe it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8399.193

And that's also how I felt about science the first time I looked down the microscope and saw a slice of a particular brain area called the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus. And we had labeled this. And I turned to Barbara Chapman, my graduate advisor there. And I was like, wow. This is amazing. And her response was so funny. She was also Harvard trained Radcliffe to be specific.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

840.815

Well, recently I saw a caption. I don't know if this is true because it was an Instagram post that the woman in the field image. Oh, Christina's world.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8417.441

And she said, yeah, brains are really cool. They're kind of like little walnuts. And I was like, so Barbara, the smartest people I ever met. She was just like, and I was like, and I thought, and then I looked around her lab. I was doing rotations where you get to sample different labs and you hope they'll take you. And she had green counters in her lab instead of black counters.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8437.277

And she had pictures of mushrooms.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8441.42

And she had this picture of a cat coming out of a farm silo. It's like its hat. And I thought, I really like this lady. Like, I want to work here. I'm going to do my PhD here. And I had already committed to another lab. And I started sneaking into her laboratory at night to do experiments.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8460.791

She got over it. So in the professional domain, I'm a completely different animal when it comes to these things. I walked into the other woman's lab. I mean, she's done tremendously well without me. So I just said, listen, I'm gonna join this other lab. But like I have no trouble doing that in the work domain, none.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8476.624

It's like, you know, when I started the podcast, sure there were these voices in my head, one of my colleagues gonna think this and that. And, you know, I was like, nah, I hope they're living their best life. I'm gonna live mine. Like, and I see them and some love it, some hate it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8488.614

And some, you know, like really I can tell, like I hear the judgments and I also hear the, like, I love it, you know, that kind of thing. It's a mix because public facing anything is gonna evoke different responses from people. And, but I'm sort of like, you do you, I'll do me and we'll both be good.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

854.239

Yeah. I didn't know the name of it. Thank you. That this was a neighbor of theirs that had a degenerative neural condition. And rather than use a wheelchair of sorts, she insisted on crawling everywhere. And so that image is actually of her crawling out into the field happily to enjoy the field. Because my impression of the painting before was that

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8671.593

She's taking some work. She's taking some work.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8677.455

It's not going to – Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that. But I am seeing a portal toward I guess what you're calling like true integrity where in the back of my mind, I have this like very – vestigial understanding of what all of that relationship stuff actually looks like when it and feels like when it's right for me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8701.062

I just, I think it's not going to look like the way I try to script it out.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8717.33

That's reassuring to me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8721.571

Your partner is awesome. Oh, I just met one of them.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

879.139

Somehow because she's seated up there, it looks like in my mind I projected onto it that there's some like desperation there or something to get back to the house. But that's not it at all. It turns out this is a woman who preferred to move with her own agency, even if it meant crawling to enjoy nature.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8796.471

And so that's how you- That was eight years ago.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8813.42

No, we have no master, no overlord. Are you kidding me? I mean, what we're talking about here is love, first of all. Like, I mean, let's just be, you know, of all the things to cut out of a podcast, we're not going to cut love out of a podcast. Oh, I love that about this podcast because a lot of people would. Yeah, well, not me.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8835.805

And for people that, like, balk at that or it creates internal friction in them, then I just invite you to, I don't know, visit your compassionate witness self, see if it's still there. And if it's still there, then, you know, hey, I actually believe that humans, partially based on developmental wiring, like, experiences, but also just differences in wiring, like, just fundamentally –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8860.137

I believe in this. I mean, one of my closest friends, my third postdoc, my third advisor, who was my postdoc advisor at Stanford is the now, unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer, is the late Ben Barris. He was born an identical twin girl. Wow. Okay. Then went up through medical school, living as a woman, graduate school as a woman, and then transitioned to Ben pretty late in life.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8886.983

So I only met Ben. Ben was a close friend and then unfortunately had probably because he had the BRCA2 mutation, died of multiple cancers, but that initiated by pancreatic cancer. First transgender member of the National Academy of Sciences. Wow. I wrote his obituary for the journal Nature.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8904.617

We were very, very close and just an amazing, very quirky dude, you know, and didn't have a romantic partner, at least not at the time when he passed or in the time that I knew him, to my knowledge. And, you know, Ben used to say, like, there are components of our wiring that are ubiquitous.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8926.289

The parts that control breathing, you know, the parts that control heart. And then there are parts of our— Wiring that are just different. And to me as a scientist, like it makes perfect sense. Like the notion that any of that would be controversial is like, what?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8939.813

Like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever that one would like not believe that people have differences in wiring because most people want to believe in differences in wiring when it's like convenient for themselves. So I really appreciate that you're sharing this because yeah, the every which version works.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

8956.081

And I also learned from my graduate advisor, Barbara Chapman, she used to say, tolerance has to go both ways. So I also love and applaud the whatever traditional nuclear family, is it still called that? Oh my gosh, yes.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

897.856

It's a magnificent painting.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

900.99

Yes. Maybe not the original, although that would be awesome.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9024.861

Maybe have the other person read it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9027.904

Totally. That would be – that I can do. As difficult as it is to have certain conversations, I could certainly write things down and just like slide an envelope.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9042.154

I love it. And I really appreciate that you shared that. And I know people listening will as well.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

905.253

Then I'm waking up in the Met.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9061.28

Well, one of the reasons I oriented very young towards and still love punk rock music, like that genre, is because to me, I could be wrong, maybe classical music being an exception, but to me, it's the only genre of music where all the versions of self and emotions are welcome. There's angry music. There's like political music. There's sad music. There's...

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9086.69

you know, music about friendship and camaraderie about loss. And you look at the community, like I'm really into this stuff. So look at the community like that. My good friend, Tim Armstrong is created around certain bands. He's going to be on the Mount Rushmore punk rock or the great Joe Strummer from the clash political music.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9104.458

You know, or Laura Jane Grace, like one of the first transgender, like outwardly facing transgendered people in the punk rock community and does amazing music was against me. And then Laura Jane Grace, I'm like, she's a hero of mine. One of my short list of heroes. I love, love, love what she's done. at so many levels.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9124.535

And it's like, there's like this tapestry of all the different humans and human experiences in a kind of single genre. And I don't know much about other genres of music, but I don't see that.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9136.658

I don't see that, like maybe across the totality of rock and roll or whatever, but you know, and so like, if ever there was a sector of life that's like all inclusive, it's that, but not because it's loud, it's fast and it's anti, it's like so much of it is like pro-social. So I think there's a big misunderstanding around that. So that ethos is something that's always resonated.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9158.707

And I feel the same way about like relationships or on social media. One of the reasons I can go on social media and not have it like spike my cortisol constantly Because I'm there and I'm like, okay, there's some like mentally healthy people here, some mentally unhealthy people here. People are here to fight. People are here to love. People are here to find partners. People are here to flirt.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9177.322

And you know what? People are here to attack me like, cool, I'm glad I'm giving you a purpose for your morning. You know, that kind of thing. I try and just approach it all that way where you just made all of this very clear in a much more succinct way where you just said like, great, I like it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9194.83

It's awesome. Yeah, yours with a real genuine sense of joy.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9199.619

Like, no, like, well, I like it. There's no friction in that statement. It's just, I like it.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9208.848

I love that you like it a lot and that you can say it that way.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9246.051

What was the quote from Jesus?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9264.209

Were you all, well, of course the answer is going to be yes. I was going to ask, were you always like this? Meaning that you could hold this position on the balance beam. And then I feel like you've taken this balance beam and like created this big mesa for others to stand on. So, so, cause it's a really stable place to be once you're there, but getting to this place of like

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9287.051

essential self and the path to integrity. I mean, can I just say it the way I feel it? Yeah. It's fucking difficult. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9359.573

I feel like it starts with the scope of self. Like we have to do this for ourselves before we can do this with and for other people.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9369.195

And then at some point, the fantasy in my mind right, like it sounds like my mother, my mother from the youngest age I can remember in myself was talking about like trying to heal the world. And I've seen the toll it's taken on her. Like she'll call sometimes and I'll be like, how's it going? And like something will have happened in the news. Like I can just tell like it really wears on her.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9391.762

And it's hard for me to hear and see, cause I've, you know, like I feel it too. It's like, goodness, like, do you feel, there's hope for our species. I mean, I'm trying to not throw the whole problems of the world at you, but- No, I've been thinking about it. I mean, like what? I'm almost 50. I feel like at this point I've seen enough to be like, there's so much goodness in people.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

94.376

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

940.984

I'm a mountains guy. As much as I love California, you know, I've realized that I just went out to Boulder, Colorado for the first time for a week just by myself. And I fell in love with it. Yeah. So I'm in the mountains. Colorado feels right to me. And there's water.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9419.005

But there's also like the capacity for so much like misunderstanding bad. You got the developmental wiring. You got the hurt people hurt people. We're all, everyone's doing the best they can. Everyone wants safety and acceptance and they're just trying to find it this way. And like, and then there are your truly bad actors because they're either miswired or whatever.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9437.858

And they're like creating havoc. Like, is there... any real hope for like a different version of things that's persistent?

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9651.657

I have a feeling I am too. And I'm certain that... I'm in it thanks to you. Seriously, in large part. I've told the story earlier that the path I'm on and the fact that anyone's listening to this and watching it is the consequence of having read your books and done the exercises and will continue to do them. I must say there really aren't words

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

966.504

A river. They've got great rivers there. Yeah, they do. Or the little streams. I like the little streams that they have there because the rivers are so loud. That's true. The rivers are really loud when they get going. Yeah. And –

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9681.701

to express how much this means to me that you would come here, take the time to share with us your wisdom and to delve into some topics that are of particular interest to me, because I, like everyone else, I'm a work in progress who's curious about the best ways to to move forward. And yeah, every time you speak and just when you show up someplace, it's an incredible thing.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9708.215

Everybody learns, everybody gets better, and everyone walks away with tools and empowerment. And I just want to say thank you so much. There's really not a whole lot else.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9727.47

Thank you. That might be the only podcast to ever end in tears. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. I hope you found it to be as informative and as meaningful as I did. To learn more about her work and to find links to her many excellent books, please see the links in the show note captions.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9746.972

If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9766.058

That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9783.47

It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9801.341

And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9819.105

If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlap with the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the contents of the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9839.443

Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes what we call protocols, which are brief one to three page PDFs that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9859.645

things like deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol. We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more. To sign up, again, at completely zero cost, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu function in the corner, scroll down to newsletter, and you provide your email. I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

9880.16

Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Martha Beck. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

993.219

Definitely small town. I can't be too isolated. If I'm going to be in a city, I'm going to be in Manhattan. It's like it's all or none. So if I'm going to be in nature, I want to be in nature. So a small town.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Richard Schwartz.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1004.026

It was just a feeling of both of us just being in this like high tension place, like, uh, and, um, uh, fortunately the conversation ended well with a path forward and that involved more contact, not less, that both of us feel really good about. But in that moment where I'm feeling overwhelmed and they're feeling overwhelmed, what's going on there? We're both adults.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1035.728

Frustration. Like that previous conversations, I felt I hadn't – I was saying things, they were saying things, but I feel like there was so much underlying tension based on a history of poor communication. nested on top of the kind of an intensity of emotion that we both tend to carry. And somehow we just like couldn't parse things from that state.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

105.59

It's one that you can apply today during the episode and that you can return to in order to apply going forward in your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1068.396

And so I sat in my chair and I just told myself, okay, I'm gonna not say anything for five minutes because I know myself. It's not that I thought I would say something really barbed wire, but I just thought this is not gonna work. Like I'm slamming my head against a wall. They're not hearing me. I'm clearly not hearing them.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1088.271

And the thing that helped me through that was just, because it was what was taught to me, I just decided to surrender. And the word surrender used to mean to me letting go of truth. And it felt really scary because when you say surrender, it's almost like saying one context is surrender means you're right no matter, and you're right. I was just going to say that's right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1108.828

But I've come to realize that surrender to me is just surrender in the moment. Yeah. so that I can get better optics, internal and external optics. So to me, the thing of embracing surrender in those types of moments, very uncomfortable, but I now have learned it's a great way to get perspective. But even as I describe it, the whole situation was so heavy.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1139.341

I came out of that call, even though it ended well, and was like, Ugh.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1143.592

Like, ugh. That was like I'd never run a marathon, but I'd rather run a marathon than do two of those a week.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1173.177

Sure.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1174.298

Yeah. Sure.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1179.703

Sure.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1180.984

I believe so, yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1199.142

Between the middle of my midsection and like right behind my forehead, like there's pressure.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1217.723

It's very unpleasant.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1221.585

No, I don't like it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

124.875

In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Dick Schwartz, welcome.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1251.616

A little bit of relaxation in the head part of it. Yeah, it's funny how when you asked me to localize it, it's so clear. It's like this thing inside me. It's about the size of a teddy bear that's just like, oh, but it's not a good thing. It's like pushed up there.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1269.951

But then when you said to get curious about it, it feels like it kind of drops down a little bit and kind of moves in a little, maybe softens a little bit.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1289.723

Well, since this is a podcast and none of this is comfortable anyway for me to do in public, if I'm quite honest. Yeah, just ask inside. Sure. No, I'll do it out loud. Okay. So what do you want me to know about you?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1316.83

Mm-hmm. Well, my answer is based on the feeling that occurred immediately after asking it, which was the answer was I can dissipate. And then I kind of felt it dissipate.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1332.676

So it feels like an energy that when condensed sucks.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1337.622

but when I look at it, softened a little bit, and then asked the question you asked, and then it feels like it just kind of went into the rest of my body, but not poisoning the rest of my body, just kind of mixing in with, you know, because we're speaking in mystical terms here, but...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

137.043

Yeah, I've heard so much about you and your work and internal family systems models. I've had the opportunity to do a little bit of that work. To be honest, I don't know whether or not the person I did that work with was formally trained in it. So I'd like to start off by just asking you what is internal family systems and what are the different components?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1373.007

If it didn't try to take over?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1380.211

Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so what would happen if you didn't take over my system that way, condense from my stomach up to my head when I'm feeling that way?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1396.921

The answers are coming really quick. That I wouldn't be able to discern the truth.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1406.86

Yeah. Yeah. Because it tends to surface when I'm hearing something that I believe to be fundamentally untrue, typically about my thoughts or feelings, right? I've come, maybe with age, I've come to the conclusion that two people can look at the same interaction or same thing. And have two very different versions of it. I'm okay with that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1431.1

The part that I'm very, very sensitive to, people in my life know this, is when someone else tells me how I feel.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1438.285

What my motives are or how I feel. That to me is like, that's kind of a hard, fast way to engage this thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1451.542

Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1471.583

what's it afraid would happen if it let that go yeah so what why are you afraid to why do you have to step in yeah when that happens my answer is not going to be very satisfying for the listeners but or for me um but it it's saying because if you can't hold on to your truth then nothing will make sense

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1507.945

Yeah. I mean, I decided to become a biologist and to try and understand the meat inside our heads and body that is the nervous system because I felt, and I still feel that it can reveal some fundamental facts or truths. Understanding reality, as it were, is really important to me because I feel like humans, including myself, of course, are so prone to misinterpretation.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1543.237

So like the truth as a thing out there, I'm willing to let go of completely. Right. Like completely. Right. The truth as it exists for knowing for certain what my motivations were or what did or didn't happen. But typically it's about motivation. Right. What did or didn't happen, you usually can parse with somebody.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1564.295

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1564.976

Yeah. That's something I feel I need to protect at all costs.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1588.157

That's an easy—that's a fast one. Not easy, but it's a fast one. Yeah, the part of me that feels injured by that is the fact that I believe that I, at least at— the beginning and throughout most of a relationship, and even if a relationship ends for whatever reason, that I know it's my nature to try and imagine as much goodness in the intent of the other person as possible.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

162.267

And as we do that, I'm sure people are going to be thinking about these various components for their own life and the people in their lives.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1621.861

So if I were to let go of this response, the keep going in my mind, I'm calling it like this, like, it's like a titanium teddy bear shaped thing, but it doesn't, it's not, I don't feel like it's like a titanium block there. Um, I would, um, potentially move into a mode of judgment, um,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1646.15

Um, of them, it's interesting because I, there are many people from my past and maybe even a few from my present that people close to me who are pretty well qualified, tell me like I should. dislike them or cut them out of my life. There are a few, maybe one or two instances of people I've cut out of my life, but it's my inclination always to just try and see what can exist.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1674.815

And that part feels important to me. I don't know why it's important now that I've come to think about it. Well, we can ask.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1692.466

Yeah, I don't like feeling that. Yeah. It feels energetically wasteful. Yeah. And it feels, more than that, it feels incredibly sad. Yeah. It's sort of like, I think to accept that part of myself is to kind of give up on some fantasy, which is probably an unrealistic fantasy, which is why I'm calling it a fantasy, I realize. Yeah. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1715.015

Like this, because I look at, and I always have since I was a kid, I look at people as we are among the animals. We're the curators of the earth because we're good at technology development. But aside from that, and our, like, just like you wouldn't, I can't imagine that a raccoon, you know, looks at another raccoon and it's like, that's a bad raccoon. It's just a rabid raccoon, you know?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1739.544

And they just- I sort of yearn for the same sensitivity to our own species.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1750.215

Yeah. Like I don't hate anybody.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1757.504

I hate things that people have said or done. Certainly mostly to other people, not to me. But, yeah, being... Like, really being angry at someone in a pervasive way, not just in the moment, is something that's very difficult for me.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1796.935

Yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1798.828

Yeah. I'm comfortable with the idea that you take the appropriate amount of distance could be zero or could be near infinite, but that I should take the appropriate amount of distance from things and people so that I can be in the most loving stance toward them or that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

18.132

Dr. Richard Schwartz is the founder of internal family systems therapy, which is a unique form of therapy that's less centered on your relationship to other people, but instead focuses mainly on identifying the parts of yourself and your personality that tend to emerge in different situations and that tend to create anxiety, resent or depression.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1816.612

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1817.072

I'm not trying to sound technical here with all the parallel constructions, but I've thought this through a lot. Like there's some people that I, um, There's no limit to the extent to which I want to interact with them. We have other things to do. We're not going to spend all our time together.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1832.395

And then there are other people that I love them, but I know that I have to keep a certain amount of distance in order to continue to love them. This is the same thing. So in that moment, it's almost like, but it's coming up without my conscious thing. It's not like saying, listen, that's the kind of person I can talk to like once a month or something.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1853.68

And I'll just add in professional settings, not now, but in the distant past, when I was in a very hierarchical structure of, I'm still in academia, I still teach, but not running research anymore formally. You know, like I had a couple senior colleagues that I really loved and respected, but that they would say or do things that I thought were frankly unethical to other people.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1880.395

And to me, I felt them as kind of abrasive. So I might, like the physical manifestation of this is, I would make it a point to, like walk past their office door quickly so that they didn't say, hey, because I don't want to interact. But I don't – I'm not familiar with cutting people out of my life.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1897.878

I'm just not familiar with doing that. I sort of don't believe in it as a value.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1921.367

Yeah. The only thing is a family member. Okay. Yeah. Not that matters, but close family member.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1950.521

That's correct.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

197.591

I know of Freudian psychoanalysis. you know, any number of different branches of psychology that have a clinical slant to them. There's cognitive behavioral therapy. What are the core components of internal family systems?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

1983.733

Yeah, that's right. Because I'm describing a recent situation where the presence of this like titanium teddy bear, sorry, I don't know why that's amusing to me to say that. Um, The shape of a teddy bear. I'm not seeing a teddy bear in there, but roughly that size and shape. It creates a protection, but a pressure internally that's super uncomfortable.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2005.102

It's actually taken me a couple days to dissipate this. And I do think... somewhat counter to the way I'm describing it. It doesn't prevent me from saying something. It actually, if it's too much, it's almost like that's when words start coming out and they're not kind. So it's not a real protector in the sense like it's preventing me from a course of action I don't want to take.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2036.497

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2037.138

It's more, it feels like it's kind of extruding all this stuff. And obviously I'm responsible for my words and actions. I know that, but it does feel like it, it, It kind of takes over. It takes over. Yeah. That's the way to put it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2189.039

Yeah, it makes total sense. You know, what you said at the beginning, permission to go to the judgmental part, I was just, you know, my mind flits when I hear that flits to, you know, two possibilities. One's a novel possibility. One's a familiar possibility. The familiar possibility is if I were to really feel the disappointment that I'm feeling when this pattern in the

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2219.062

and the other person shows up again, because at least it seems to... I'm very familiar with the pattern. Right. Then it would fundamentally, like, change the way that I feel about them.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2232.151

That's right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2232.711

Like, I'm trying to hold on to the goodness in that. The relationship. That's right. But, of course, I want to be very clear, not just for anyone listening, but for myself, too, that clearly the protecting role of this titanium teddy bear

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2249.117

um it's created something where what the times when things have broken through from my side they're not kind right and or they're spoken in a way that just is not constructive right right um so yeah and then the second possibility is that I hadn't considered this possibility.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2273.155

But the second possibility is that were I to let myself feel that disappointment, that maybe the relationship could persist. Like I've been looking at those things as mutually exclusive. And as I say all this, I also realized that, well, honest disclaimer is like, I don't want to give the impression that I don't judge people. I'm human. And I certainly do.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2304.674

I'm just saying that when there's a relationship that I wish to maintain, I'll go to great lengths to push aside knowledge of my own experience and, or just judgment. I've made this, um, I've engaged in this pattern in ways that ended up being extremely destructive to me by completely like putting the blinders onto things that were right in front of me. And that's what I'm talking about.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2329.024

Consciously.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2330.425

Because I adored the person so much in other dimensions. Like that, you know, and... you know, it's not a, for lack of a better word, a holistic way to approach things. But I also will say that in contrast to those types of relationships, the, the relationships where this is, where the, the titanium tether is not required feel to me.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2353.167

So like by comparison, but also in the absolute scale feel to me, like the best possible relationships one could have. They're like pinch me type of relationships, like my friendship, some of my relationships to family, like my coworkers, and there are others too. I've certainly had romantic relationships like that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2370.342

Relationships, my relationship to my dog is trivial as people might think that seems that the contrast of that, like where there's no need for this protector part, it's like the best thing because it feels completely safe and uninhibited. I never have to worry that I'm going to be taken over from the inside, nor do I ever worry that I'm going to like really screw up.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2397.026

And I hope that if I do screw up, they'll tell me, but like it's the complete absence of fear.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2417.02

it's a lot in the sense that, um, I don't like feeling that titanium thing, teddy bear. Um, it's very, it's been very informative. So it's balanced by that. Um, and maybe that's why I went into a little riff about the pleasant relationships and how, um, how outsized positive they are for me. They're, they're like a,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2441.613

They're like a salve and an elixir for me that maybe I gave myself a little like wash over with that because it's pretty uncomfortable. But it's been, it's really informative. And it also tells me that the internal family systems work that I did with someone else was an attempt at this, but so very different, which makes sense because this is your art and science. Yeah. So I'm grateful. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2466.116

Yeah, it feels good.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2481.886

How would we go about doing that?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2509.279

Yeah. Not that I need clarity on this right now, but it's more that it protects the possibility of a relationship at all. Like I think the fear is like, if I were to look through my lens of truth, what's happened or is happening in the moment, if I were a quote unquote better boundaried person, it'd be done yesterday. But so it's sort of like a desire to live out a fantasy.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2539.441

I mean, if I'm honest.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2598.571

And for the record, I never owned a teddy bear as a kid. I had a stuffed frog.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2603.735

Well, I'm not embarrassed to say I had a stuffed frog that I loved, Freddie the Frog. So I don't know where the teddy bear thing came up, but the shape was so very clear.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2643.215

Mm-hmm.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2801.325

I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2822.549

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2835.914

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2854.966

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2879.196

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2898.089

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2915.365

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

292.602

So at the time, were you already practicing as a clinical psychologist?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2927.991

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2943.641

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2965.603

I'm struck by a couple of things that I think people will be, if I may, wise to think about. One is in the classic psychodynamic or CBT model of therapy, it's clear that the client or patient, sometimes it's called, right? Patient-therapist relationship is one where it takes on certain components that exist in the outside world with other people.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

2995.284

And it's always slightly bothered me slash concerned me that that's the structure. And as you said, in IFS, internal family systems, you become your own kind of therapist, if you will, for lack of a better way to put it. I like that because... there's so much discussion nowadays about, you know, parenting yourself and this kind of thing and learning to mother yourself and father yourself.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3026.936

And I actually think there's great value in that. I mean, I learned by living alone, you know, how to cook for myself and clean for myself. These are, I'm mapping to stereotypes here, but also to protect myself and to, you know, organize myself and be very, very disciplined. And actually running a laboratory was a great teaching there because you're basically a single academic parent

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3047.979

to all these people. So you quickly realize where you lack maternal instincts and where you may lack or overemphasize or have hypertrophied paternal instincts. So that was a good forum to see my weaknesses and hopefully some strengths too. So I like this idea that one can play those roles for oneself.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3071.03

how is IFS typically done if somebody doesn't have access to a therapist who's expert in it, or is that really the only proper gateway into it? No, so... Because I'm sitting here with the master, the founder, and I'm very grateful, by the way, for the work we just did. So thank you. It feels good. As a privilege. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, likewise.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3096.736

But most people won't have direct one-on-one access to you, so... It's very experiential. I imagine in books and courses, people can learn how to do this. And by the way, this was not preconceived as a pitch for books and courses, but I'm wondering, can somebody do this on their own the very first time? That's what I want to know.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3227.228

I do. I do. In fact, something pops to mind. Maybe I could just ask you about it. My mind's right on what you're saying, but something occurred to me as you said it. which is if I were to, for instance, really feel the feeling of like, hey, that's really screwed up or like actually feel the disappointment or judgment that this titanium teddy bear is trying to protect against.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3256.252

I realize it leads to a lot of role confusion and identity confusion. That's right. And I'll just be very blunt. It's probably not the best thing to do on a podcast, but I'm going to do it anyway, which is, you know, this is how I feel about modern politics. I see things on the left that make sense to me and things that are, to me, just absolutely ludicrous, inappropriate and offensive.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3279.801

and like just badly wrong. I see things on the right that make a ton of sense to me and also things that are inappropriate, offensive, and wrong. And as a consequence, I'm trying to see the best, the goodness in both sides and just kind of create this kind of Swiss cheese model of the world.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3297.392

I'm talking about politics because it's just simpler to do and people at least know what the groups we're talking about.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3304.352

But then it leaves me in a place of no affiliation, and I'm then between one of two stances, one of just kind of standing there being like, yeah, well, there's no real position in the middle that is an official position in the middle, but it also makes me just want to put up the middle finger to both and say I'm a double hater.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3325.536

But, of course, I'm an adult and a citizen who cares about people in the country, and so I feel like – to be an adult. I can't opt out, but there's like, I feel unaffiliated. I feel like there's no option for me. And this maps pretty well to, I think, the identity and role confusion that I feel when I place my, again, understanding the truth is a complicated thing, but my

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3353.075

judgment on things and people. It's like, well, then what is my role as a son? What is my role as a partner? What is my role if this thing is true? And so it's a way I'm realizing of protecting the simplicity of a role.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3367.698

And I did grow up in a home where like the roles were like, you know, your son, you do certain things like, you know, you do, you know, and so, but I also have a rebellious side to me. So the The role confusion is something that I imagine a lot of people are familiar with.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3388.464

And I also believe that when you just really say, well, they did something bad, therefore all bad, therefore I'm part of the opposite team. That to me is an unlived life. But I see a lot of people do it. And actually, sometimes I'm envious of people that have that ability because they seem so unconflicted. Right. So it's a tough thing to be a thinking, feeling person at the level of nuance. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3415.575

It kind of sucks sometimes. Yeah. I'd rather do that than be a double hater or just cleanly opt in. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

36.579

Another key feature of internal family systems therapy is that it's not just focused on fixing challenges within us, it also teaches you how to grow your confidence, openness, and compassion. Now, today's episode is different than any other episode of the podcast that we've done before, and that's for two reasons.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3627.282

Do you think that people who... have the reflex or the ability to kind of somaticize a bit. Like I obviously, I don't think of myself as somebody who's like psychosomatic. I don't have stomach aches and headaches and stuff unless I caught a virus, you know, but, but I can feel where certain things are in my body pretty quickly and always have. Do you think that

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3657.142

IFS lends itself better to people who, you know, feel things somatically versus people that are like really cognitive and in their head. Because I have that component too. I can actually feel the switch. Like I do it through, I'll go into like a narrative and then I start to see the structure like up here.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3703.875

Been there.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3706.574

Tenure is nice, but one should tend to their emotional selves while they're pursuing it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3740.273

So if we were to just step back for a moment and do sort of a top contour summary of the process, someone brings forward a memory, a recent or distant memory of something that made them feel not good. and you try and localize some sensation in the body, get a sense of its location. Let me pause there. I'll tell you why. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3799.017

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3815.392

Got it. And then one places some attention from the stance of curiosity. They were like, what's there? What's it trying to say? Exactly. And then you start to reveal the underlying layers of what's it protecting? What are those things that are protective trying to say?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3840.059

I see. Oh, I love this because I'm a big believer in seeding the unconscious mind and then letting things surface either in sleep or in meditative states or – Has internal family systems been combined with some of the therapies that are now getting tested still in clinical trial stage around psychedelics?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

386.081

Are these different parts that exist within each and all of us, are they represented by a clear and distinct voice from the other? Or do people typically experience them as just the self, like my inner critic? You'll give us the other names and titles. Or is this happening typically below people's conscious awareness?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3896.55

Yeah, I've been open about the fact, and I always have to provide the disclaimer. I don't just say this to protect me. I say this to protect listeners that I do think...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3906.98

young people should avoid psychedelics the brain is already in a psychedelic state uh it's it's the the amount of plasticity and this is is really tremendous and this is coming from somebody who regrets it but i did psychedelics recreationally as a kid um and i regret it i returned to them later in a clinical setting um and and derived a lot of benefit i think from them

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3932.013

namely high-dose psilocybin and MDMA, but both of those are still very much illegal. You can get into a lot of trouble for taking them and or certainly for selling them. So that's the cautionary note there. And the clinical trials are really impressive, in my opinion, spectacularly impressive, especially for MDMA and for the treatment of PTSD.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3954.348

But the FDA this last year did not approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. I think going forward in the new administration, it's likely that it will get approved, but who knows? Who knows? So anyway, that's a bunch of pseudo-legalese jargon, but it's sincere. If I were an 18- or 19-year-old person or 30-year-old person listening to a conversation about psychedelics and how they can be helpful—

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

3983.078

I would want to also know that there are instances where people take them and they don't have the appropriate guidance in and through it and out of it, and it leads to serious problems. So this is a real, real thing that we're talking about.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4011.805

Great.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4123.3

Interesting. I've never tried ketamine. A few years ago, and I've talked about this publicly as well, I started developing a pretty deep relationship to spirituality and God, and mostly through the path of giving up control. I mean, there's just breaking news, folks. You can't control everything, you know? And you can control certain things, but most things, no.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4154.082

The way you describe ketamine is very interesting because as a dissociative anesthetic, it works in such a fundamentally different way than say MDMA, which is an empathogen which makes people feel so much more.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4170.46

I mean, I sort of half joke that the, aside from the safety legality stuff, the concern I have about MDMA is that if one is not in the eye mask, if you don't have somebody guiding you through it and taking some notes,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4187.469

You know, if you listen to a piece of jazz or classical music or your favorite rock and roll album or you're there with your dog or cat or plants, I mean, you can spend the entire four hours bonding with the plant.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4200.319

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4200.679

You're not going to run off and get married to a plant. You're not going to try and fornicate with a plant. Right. One hopes. Right. It's a very precious but very labile situation. Totally agree. Because it's such a strong empathogen that whatever you direct your attention to, internal or external, is going to hypertrophy. So you just have to be really careful. Totally agree.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4231.144

And given that the neurotoxicity issues seem worked out and that if it's actually MDMA and isn't other things... By the way, the big study that showed neurotoxicity of MDMA in non-human primates, turned out they were injecting methamphetamine.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4245.003

What?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4245.643

Yeah, that paper was retracted. It was published in Science. We'll provide a link to the paper and the retraction. The retraction was not as publicized. Wow. Methylene dioxide, methamphetamine, MDMA has not been shown to be neurotoxic, provided that's what people are taking. Wow. And not taking some combination of other things. Yeah, it's a real tragedy the way that...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4267.901

retractions don't get nearly the kind of popular press coverage that initial studies do, regardless of whether or not the initial study was positive or negative. In any case, I do believe there are other routes to calming down the forebrain in the context of doing this kind of work that I'd just like your thoughts on. When I first wake up in the morning, I'm in kind of a liminal state, but

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4293.061

The thing that I don't want to think about comes to my brain. I can't avoid it. It's just like the protectors are not available. They're still asleep. So that seems valuable. I've tried recently to keep my eyes closed. Sometimes I'll get up and use the bathroom, but keep my eyes closed, stay in that still state. explore the contours of that thing.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4317.177

Provided it's done safely and not anywhere near water. Cyclic hyperventilation breath work done for a few minutes or cycles, you know. we think can change the brain activity so the forebrain kind of comes off line a bit, so to speak. All these things just put managers to sleep. Put managers to sleep.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

443.749

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4433.823

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4449.6

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4463.909

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Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4480.62

Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4499.976

That approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4518.741

As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4535.79

Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. What is so striking to me is that And Martha taught me this practice of when we think about the things that create shame for ourselves, if we're able to go up and really look at those and own them not from the perspective of I'm proud of them, but own them as good.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4560.504

in us and not of us, you know, that it's incredibly freeing. And indeed it is so freeing, right? It's like the, if there were like a secret to life, like it would at least include that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4581.735

Yeah, please.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

461.888

There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, It provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4706.209

Yeah, and I'd like to really go into this a bit because we hear all the time that when we're upset about something, it's something in ourselves that we're really upset about.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4723.105

So if I'm upset about the intolerance of good ideas from people in opposite groups of each other's good ideas, this logic would say that I'm really just disapproving of that aspect of myself that is like black and white judgmental.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4748.313

Got me. Then again, you're the therapist. Right. So is this always true?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4757.46

Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

478.315

Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4830.03

I think it's important that people hear that. namely that if we get in touch with these parts of ourselves that are protectors, that it makes us less vulnerable, not more vulnerable, both to quote unquote attack. But that also, I guess, put simply that in understanding of ourselves and compassion for ourselves, one develops understanding and compassion for others. But that doesn't mean

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4859.793

that you're opening yourself up for harm.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4863.935

And the opposite is actually true.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4890.021

This idea of, I'm definitely following that we will sometimes create in others what we fear because it allows us to engage in this unhealthy dynamic. It seems so counterintuitive, right? Maybe we take a kind of classic set of examples that I think are pretty common. A person who's codependent with somebody who's a substance abuse addict.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4918.48

or somebody who's very timid and always wants to pacify, and somebody who's very dominant. When I zoom out from the second case, it actually kind of makes me chuckle how crazy that is. Because if you think about it, a person who is very dominant doesn't need somebody very timid in order to feel dominant, right? They could probably...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

494.941

Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

4943.201

feel whatever power it is they need to feel with somebody who is less timid and maybe the relationship would be healthier. But that's not how people tend to other select. It's kind of interesting. So it raises perhaps a bigger question. Why do people select people that are fundamentally bad for them?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5009.722

Is this anything like the sort of repetition compulsion? Yeah, exactly. That we tend to repeat a pattern over and over again as an attempt to resolve, not just a manifestation of dysfunction.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5062.606

And it's always inside.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5132.279

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting how romantic relationships are where these patterns get repeated. And at the same time, numerous examples in my life of healthy relationships. Is that usually the case because people have done the work before or because they had a minimum of trauma in their upbringing?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5152.976

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5154.277

What percentage of kids, adults as well, do you think had a minimum of trauma are just because of the way they're wired and the way the stuff is organized within them that they naturally attach to a good partner and are pretty healthy? Is it like

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

516.031

It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing. My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5190.727

Half of marriages in this country and in divorce are... and presumably of the ones that don't, I'm guessing somewhere between a half and a quarter of those people are really unhappy. Sounds so pessimistic, but if you just look at the numbers, and I'm an optimist, I already acknowledge that I don't like to think about bad stuff. And I, you know, so...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

52.745

First, Dr. Schwartz takes me through a brief session of IFS therapy so you can see exactly what it looks like in practice, and then he takes you, the listener, through it as well.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5221.018

Yeah, I'm guessing that a lot of people repeat these patterns. But it seemed as if maybe 20, 30 years ago, because these ideas weren't discussed really, so many fewer people were in any kind of analysis or personal exploration work, that as a society, we defaulted to just sort of role execution. You're a father and a husband, so you do certain things, and you don't do certain things.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5252.934

You're a wife and a mother, so you do certain things, and you don't do certain, and so on. And I think nowadays there's a lot of discussion about, you know, is there a resurgence of organized religion because we've drifted so far from these kind of core structures? I mean, Love your thoughts on that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5272.544

And also what you think doing this kind of internal work on oneself without requiring any input or participation from another, what the value of that is. It sounds like there's tremendous value to just doing this work for oneself, maybe with someone trained in IFS.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

535.026

But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day. I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5385.187

I'm struck by how experiential it is as opposed to, um, just conceptual. I mean, obviously the concepts are important, but I think, uh, internal family systems was described for me previously, kind of mapped out for me on paper.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5400.087

I got a sense of it actually with some objects placed out and it was helpful, but I think just having done a little bit of it today, only by actually feeling the sensations in the body associated with it, does it actually really make sense to me. I mean, it made sense cognitively, but that's so very different

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5421.308

very removed.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5422.048

Yeah. It's like me telling people, you know, get out and get sunlight in your eyes in the morning and set your circadian rhythm. Like you can know that you can know the underlying mechanisms, the neurons, the pathways, the hormones, et cetera.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5430.933

But at some level, until you experience what that's like for two or three days in a row, it's, you might as well be reading about, I don't know, titanium teddy bears, you know?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5468.428

In order to be deliberately repetitive, I wonder if it would be useful to the listeners to, would it be possible to just pose the questions to them as an exercise that they could do in real time. Totally, yeah. Thank you so much. I think that would be tremendously valuable. So I'm going to have to erase myself here for once. I'm going to be quiet for a little while, folks.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5491.687

And you are the lucky patient that gets to talk to Dr. Schwartz here. And he's going to pose a series of questions. And we'll allow some moments of break or silence for you to be able to tap into the answers to these in real time. That way, you don't have to create a parallel construction of what we did earlier.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

550.863

With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

569.454

They're incredibly delicious and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman. I definitely want to go into what the various protector roles or titles are, labels, excuse me, and the exiles.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

592.913

Before we do that, since you brought up the topic of trauma, this is a topic that I think many, many people are interested in. I'm just curious, how do you define a trauma? And why do you think it is that traumas tend to lock us into a state that was representative of an earlier time. Why is it that it's so linked to this thing of time perception?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

5954.09

Thank you for that. That was awesome. I also was able to get some, I think, good work done in that. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. Totally different location, totally different set of dynamics. Even though what you just took us through is very experiential, what, if any, value do you think there is to writing down sort of key takeaways? A lot of value, yeah. Okay.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6043.78

Well, you're very familiar with these parts. And to clarify for people, when Dr. Schwartz is saying parts, he's saying these personalities within us, not necessarily the body part where it manifests, but maybe that provides a physical anchor to look to.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6110.946

Oh, cool. Great field.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6122.76

I hope I didn't reinforce the negative ones.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6148.668

Mm-hmm.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6160.596

Thanks for sharing that. I didn't detect any anxiety whatsoever, neither pre-recording nor during this discussion. If you don't mind, could you describe or maybe even just list off some of the other labels of parts that people might encounter if they do this kind of work? So you describe them as protectors that manage and then the exiles, which are

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6189.685

The parts of us that the protectors and managers are protecting. Yeah. Correct? Okay. Those are two different things, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

62.429

So as you'll soon observe and experience, internal family systems therapy allows you to work through challenging sticking points, basically the parts or feelings within you that you don't like to have, and then it shows you how to convert those feelings into more functional aspects of yourself.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6361.035

That it would just feel like too much to bear.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6364.878

Like you just couldn't take it anymore.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6367.06

Which, of course, is a crazy statement because it's not like my brain would explode.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6372.264

Yeah. They're not grounded in logic.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6386.896

No.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6391.533

Well, fortunately, I don't feel suicidal. But the answer would be yes.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6410.677

I mean, I have to imagine that if somebody, forgive me for going into my head about this, but if I have to imagine, it's just hard for me to imagine being suicidal.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6419.822

Yeah. But I have to imagine that if somebody is feeling suicidal in order to protect themselves against the enormity of the feelings they would otherwise feel, and then they are offered the opportunity to be released from those feelings, I think the scary part would be like the first – it's like wading into really cold water.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6443.203

You know, I always feel that way about negative feelings. Once you get past your kind of waist or so, you get your shoulders under. That's a good analogy. It's a heck of a lot easier.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6460.894

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6518.857

something comes to mind for a number of years, not now, fortunately. I mean, I still work a lot, but I work like, you know, I don't want to, well, I'll share the numbers, but it's not a goal that no one should try and exceed this. I mean, there were times in graduate school where I, No joke, worked 80, 85 hours a week, slept under my desk. I lived in my office as a junior professor.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6543

My students can attest to that. I brushed my teeth. Not every night, but if I had deadlines, it was just all in with mind, body, heart, everything. It's not healthy. And at some point, I had to take a look at it because it's not conducive to a lot of things. It brings a lot. You can... Get a lot done. I won't lie. You can get a lot done. You can get a lot of degrees.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6563.689

You can get a lot of knowledge and you can accomplish a lot. But I decided to take a look at it. You know, like what would happen if I, I don't know, published five awesome papers in a year instead of 10 or something like crazy. You know, I just started looking at it and it just, it seems crazy now. But I remember the genuine fear of backing off. And I started to realize that

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6588.283

I loved what I did, but that some of the work came from a desire to compete out other feelings. It's a form of dissociation. And then what happened was I was able to adjust my hours, really pick the projects that...

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6605.51

held the most meaning for me and then really savor them and enjoy them and that's how i approached the podcast and other things i'm doing so it was a tremendously useful exploration but it was terrifying i didn't have to go to 12 step for work addiction or anything i mean it wasn't at that level but um but you're giving an example of exactly what we do we go to that workaholic park

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6631.451

Yeah, so what I came to, it's interesting, was the – it was literally a fear of annihilation, of disappearing. And then I thought, well, then you parsed it a little bit further, disappearing to who? It's not like there was an absence of positive feedback. So it wasn't actually – to avoid disappearing from the outside world.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6649.438

Because I'll tell you, when you're working 80, 85 hours a week, you're already gone. You just don't realize it. It was actually some way of avoiding this thing that I've now come to really love. I learned it from my bulldog. Um, I used to have this assumption that slow is low, like to slow down is depressive.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6675.323

I mean, now I love slowing down and I did learn that from my bulldog and a few people came into my life and their dogs as well. And I learned like, um, to really savor slow and not just so that I can bounce back into work, that too, admittedly, but also to just, and it came through, I just would like your thoughts on this.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6697.939

I realized right as I would go into or come out of a meditation or what I call non-sleep deep rest, this kind of yoga nidra like deep relaxation thing that listeners of this podcast will be familiar with hearing about, that there's this really terrifying moment

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6714.853

where I realized someday, assuming I'm awake when it happens, or it's not an accident, or I don't get involved in an accident, I'm gonna take my last breath. And it's absolutely terrifying, that concept. And I realized that the fear of disappearing is actually a fear of death. And what I was really afraid of was death. And I was using work.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6737.659

So it was a long way from like working 60 hours or 40 hours a week instead, or 30, whatever. People choose as opposed to 85, but what I realized that what I was running from was the fear of my own mortality. That's right. And I didn't have to use any substances to realize this. I just had to keep peeling back the layers of like, what are you really afraid of?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6755.375

And now I've come to the conclusion that most addiction, having talked to a lot of addicts with process addictions and substance addictions, et cetera, that deep down everyone, addict or no, is terrified of death. It's just that some people are in touch with that terror and have worked through it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6805.827

Yeah, I think if I, for better or worse, if I see or experience something that scares me a lot, I have to. explore the contours of it. That's been a dangerous part of my life and it's been a helpful. Oh yeah. And it's been a helpful part of my life too. You know, the ability to suppress one's reflex to avoid fear is such a complicated thing because on the one hand it's necessary to navigate life.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6837.1

On the other hand, if people always say, is there, what would you tell your younger self if you could tell your younger self anything? And it would, I would have said, hey dude, listen, you know, if something makes you anxious, get out of there. Because my reflex has always been that if something gives me anxiety, like, okay, here's a test of myself. I need to overcome it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6859.592

So in any case, some people are the opposite, you know? Yeah, I've tended to touch the hot stove three times when it should have been one trial learning, and it hurt the first time. But that's just me. I mean, everyone's got these things. But what I'm discovering, certainly through what you're telling us today, but also the exploration of these things is that

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6883.914

so much of life is structured especially nowadays with the phone love the phone love social media but um so much of life is structured to fill all the space between activities and i do want your thoughts on have like what you see in terms of um things that are active impediments to doing good work of the sorts of work that you're describing today, self-work.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6912.525

I would never ask, I guess, to be disparaging of the world just for its own sake, but I think people are now starting to develop an awareness of how certain technologies and lifestyle habits that are unique to the last five or 10 years are really exacerbating our problems as they relate to ourselves, not just interpersonal dynamics.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

6935.369

You seem to be thinking about the big picture a lot, so I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7070.696

For developing internal family systems?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7079.903

What is with the field of psychiatry?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7127.443

Right, the pain point can potentially become the source of tremendous growth and value to the world based on what you've developed. Keep in mind, I learned about your work, not just through Martha Beck, although Martha as well, but several incredibly talented psychologists, scholars in the field of research psychology, and actually a psychiatrist as well.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7156.851

Maybe I'll just share the... So a psychiatrist that I think the world of said to me, I won't reveal who it is, but they said, do you know why there's so many lousy psychiatrists? This isn't a joke, actually, even though it sounds like a setup for a joke. I said, no, why? And they said, well, because if you're a cardiothoracic surgeon and like 30% of your patients die,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7182.563

you're considered a pretty terrible cardiothoracic surgeon. If you're a psychiatrist, unless your patients kill themselves on a frequent basis, you can have a pretty quote-unquote successful career.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7196.473

And no one ever questions whether or not you're good at your job or not. Because the field, A, has a dearth of tools. B, the kind of assumption is that a lot of things don't get better and on and on. And they listed off all these reasons why the field of psychiatry is so replete with what they described as lousy psychiatrists.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7220.14

So I do believe there are some excellent psychiatrists out there, research and clinical and both. I don't know if that does anything. It sounds like you worked through your relationship to psychiatrists on your own. You don't need my statements.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7251.177

It's interesting how timing in a field is so important, and not just an academic field, but a clinical field, and the ethos. If anyone is interested in... Understanding where we are in the arc of medicine and culture, I highly recommend reading Oliver Sacks' book, On the Move. He's obviously a neurologist and writer, but he describes coming up through medicine and being in these various fields.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7281.425

He worked on headache for a while. It's pretty interesting. He wrote a book about migraine. He worked on with migraine. kids on the autism spectrum and a bunch of different fields. And in every single one of those fields was vehemently attacked by some individual for whatever reason, usually a superior, kicked out of universities, moved to another one. Now he did have his own issues.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7305.995

He was, you know, At the time, he was a methamphetamine addict and things like that. But he got over that and became the great Oliver Sacks that he was. But he describes these fields as having a culture at the time of really trying to suppress new ideas and holding people down.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7321.582

And then toward the end of his career, several of the universities that essentially had fired him earlier, hospitals and universities, were trying to recruit him back again. with multiple appointments because now he was this famous guy who had written the movie or worked on the movie awakenings and like, you know, and of course it revealed the hypocrisy of, of, uh, these big institutions.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7343.296

And so it made me chuckle and also realize that for those of us who are doing public health education at, at any level, and certainly on the, these more, um, non-traditional things, uh, approaches that, uh, the time is right for, for sharing them. And, um, And the good news is nobody lives forever. So, you know, the old guard dies or retires, you know.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7372.085

I won't ask which one it was. We can have an offline discussion about that. They just might. A couple of more questions. First of all, going back to this thing about the larger context of culture.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7389.628

I love the optimism that's threaded through your view that we could get God willing, Democrats and Republicans to come to some sort of common ground around the most important issues that we potentially could eradicate destructive racism, racism of all kinds. But given the way you described it, certainly it's implementation in the world is the first thing that needs to be dealt with, right?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7422.358

Certainly if people can see those parts of themselves, and work with them that we stand a chance to do that and given that trauma is near ubiquitous right um that people could start to address their own traumas so that they can induce fewer in other people i guess that's basically the the ultimate goal of humanity totally um and i

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7448.775

I, like so many people lately, not just, by the way, not just in the last year or so, but like for the last 10 years, have just been developing the sense like, goodness, like it just seems like the number of problems just seems to be expanding exponentially. How do we get our heads around this? And there's so much blame game going on of, well, it's because of this and it's because of that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7471.72

And like, that's not a solution at all. So I love your sense of optimism that it's possible. And then my question is, How do we get that going, to be direct?

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7505.128

You got people who were bulimic to essentially not be bulimic any longer.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7509.791

Wow.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7536.864

Yeah, very common, right? Yeah. Before, when you talked about bulimia, bulimia is notoriously difficult to treat, let alone cure.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7553.63

moving from the one-on-one therapy model to a model where people can do this work on their own as well as in groups. But if I'm correct in thinking this, it seems like getting the work done with oneself is the first like real step.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7570.999

There's no replacement for that.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7573.04

Yeah.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

76.443

So as you'll soon see, internal family systems therapy is both super interesting and it's an incredibly empowering practice. It's also a form of therapy that's now been studied and for which there's a lot of peer reviewed science to support its efficacy.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7648.473

Fantastic. No, really fantastic. I don't think we've ever done a podcast like this where the audience had a chance to do self-work in real time.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7666.772

Yeah, I don't know that I've ever heard a discussion like it, to be honest, which is just a testament to you and your bravery. It's very clear that Your decision not to go into endocrinology was one that we all are grateful for. It wasn't a decision. Well, my endocrinologist friends will have to just accept that, you know, we've got a lot of good endocrinologists.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7694.428

We needed you, Dr. Dick Schwartz, too. um to find yourself uh in this business of of um discovering and creating a truly novel approach to therapy and self-work that uh goes all the way up to the potential to change culture change the world so that's the goal yeah those those aren't just words that's uh those are um

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7722.904

real aspirational possible things that could be accomplished if people do this work. And in coming here today and sharing with us the structure of internal family systems and a demonstration of how it can work and offering people the opportunity to do it themselves in real time and giving us your perspective.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7747.566

about the things that are around it as well as in it with incredible clarity and just a real beautiful sense of care for people that comes through. But also I like the concreteness of it so very much.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7765.852

It's very concrete.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7766.693

Right? It's not abstract.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7768.973

Right.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7770.194

And I really appreciate that. And I'm certain that everyone else does as well. So I want to thank you for coming here today. for sharing this. We will provide links to places where people can learn more through books and courses and other resources that you've created. And also just for the work that you've done and for being you. It's been a real pleasure and I'm so very glad we did it.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7821.412

Thank you. Well, this whole thing is a labor of love and a free fall through just curiosity.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7832.538

Yeah. I hope to continue the conversation. Would love to. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. To learn more about his work and to find links to his many excellent books, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7852.333

That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7870.707

I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7886.394

This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7906.099

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7923.684

So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7941.829

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure,

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7958.627

We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

7975.539

Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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By the end of today's episode, Dr. Dick Schwartz will have shown you that a lot of the negative reactions that we tend to have with different people and things tend to originate from a few basic patterns that once we understand, we can really transmute into more positive responses. It's a really interesting practice.

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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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So the firefighter, the inner firefighter role is one of the exiles that surfaces under conditions of a lot of emotion. Maybe we could, this is a beautiful description, and I'm completely on board this idea that we have multiple aspects of self or selves inside. Jung said that too, I think, right?

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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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Yeah, and what I like about this protectors slash managers versus protectors again, not versus because they're combated, but as a distinct category, the exiles is, just feels very true to me. And I like the directness of the language. So maybe we could just like, create a mental grid for people.

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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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Like if, let's say I came to you as a patient and I said, listen, I, you know, I'm, I'll just be direct. I'll be honest. Why not? Let's do it. Secretly. I brought you here to get therapy. No, no. Um, but okay. So I'm somebody who, uh, for a very long time has been able to organize his life. Um, I tend to have, um, smooth interactions with my coworkers, great friendships.

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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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I now have a very good relationship with my immediate family. Very good, in fact. I'm still working on a few things with a few people, but I'm living in a mode of great joy and appreciation these days.

Huberman Lab

How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

976.362

However, I'm, I'm not going to give the details of this for sake of privacy, but you know, the other day I was in a discussion with a family member and they had a grievance with me that I felt we had already addressed and it,

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How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

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Um, and it became a very high friction conversation very quickly to the point where we tabled as an idea that maybe we just take some like serious space, like, um, which was not reflective of how deeply I love this person or they love me.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and one of the world's leading pioneers in the mind-body connection.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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So that's the level three where you have so much, you hide it and – Well, this is interesting because when I was growing up, unless people had money to purchase things, they would drive older cars and things like that.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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um with credit that changed yeah um and i have friends who like to wear very very fancy watches i also have friends who um have far more money than them and uh choose to wear no watch so it's it's getting harder to discern um except at the extremes of course yeah it's getting harder to discern who has what and and maybe that's a good thing again again at the extremes it's obvious you know that i

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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The homeless issue in Los Angeles and everywhere in California is so troubling and so sad what's happening. Setting that aside, I think nowadays we have less information about people's values, even just by looking at them. When I was growing up, if somebody wore a particular T-shirt with a particular band, you kind of knew if you were part of the same group. All of that's gone now.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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It's all leveled.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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not a fan of particular activities as a way to increase longevity or particular activities as a way to increase mindfulness. But could we say that having somewhat of a mindset of playfulness with ideas and one's environment could potentiate longevity?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Well, that's a great skill. Yeah, yeah. I was talking to my mom last night and she was saying, you know, not much is happening here. And I kept saying, no, like tell me, what are you guys up to? It had been a while. And she said, well, I don't have this like big exciting life, you know. And I said, what's going on? And she said, okay, well –

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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if you really want to know, there's this new plant weed that's growing in the garden. And she started explaining to me this really interesting weed that has these little yellow flowers. And my mom loves gardening. And so she delights in gardening and I was delighting in her delight.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And when she was done, I said, that's actually the kind of thing I'd love to talk about, you know, and hear more about because I also know my own experience. So I didn't need to talk about like what's going on on the podcast or what's going on in my daily life or the

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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incredible breeds of dogs that I'm considering getting, maybe all of them, because I was interested in what was going on in her garden. And so what was trivial to her was actually interesting to me and it represented a really good bridge to a number of things. I have to say that we were talking earlier about how one frames past, present, and future.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I don't know if we were talking about it in that way, but in thinking about age, longevity, and what's possible, the word that came to mind that I'd like to just pressure test a little bit is nostalgia. And I have this feeling, and I hope I'm wrong because I've been wrong about most things today in a way that I'm learning from, that nostalgia can be

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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perhaps kind of a dangerous line of thinking, this idea that things used to be great, but now they're not.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And I thought to myself, what a terrible sense or emotion. And it led me to some practical questions like, should we go to high school reunions? And I thought, well, no, if all we're going to do is embrace nostalgia. Yes, if it makes us feel like we're 19 again, this kind of thing. And here you can substitute reunions with, should I look at photo albums?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Like, I don't know how I feel about photos from the past. I used to collect them and cherish them. And now sometimes when I look at them, it just makes me long for something. And I'm trying, I think I need to learn how to pivot through that. So what are your thoughts on nostalgia and just notions of how we think about our past and

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Gamifying things is one of the great pleasures of parenting.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You know, and earlier you were talking about what do your grandkids call you? Cosmic leader. Cosmic leader. But you can play these games with them, right? And then they reach their adolescent and teen years and then they claim they don't like those games.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But as a former child and then teen, now I delight in some of the games that my parents played with me when I was little because it brings me back to the notions of imagination. Yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And for people that say, well, that's a luxury. I need to work in order to survive and feed my family, et cetera. How does one reconcile that?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You've done some beautiful studies on healing and time perception. Could you just describe that experiment? Sure, sure. I love this paper.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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In fact, we also talk about how mindset can impact cancer outcomes or rather overcoming cancer. We discuss examples, mechanisms, and practical application of those mechanisms. By the end of today's episode, I assure you that Dr. Ellen Langer will change the way that you think about the mind-body connection, the way you think about your health,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I'll occasionally go into hook righty, but I'm a righty. My dad was naturally left-handed. They forced him to be right-handed.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Oh, this fits so beautifully. I don't want to spend too much time on this, and you're probably aware of these experiments, but just for sake of our listeners. You probably know that your colleagues at Harvard, David Huell and Torrance and Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for brain plasticity, critical periods of vision, et cetera.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And they had this sort of doctrine that they stated in the 80s and it lasted until the gosh, until the early and mid 2000s, that there was no significant brain plasticity in adult humans, that it literally shut down.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Mike Merzenich and a guy named Greg Reconzone at UCSF did these beautiful studies, I'll try and describe this really quickly, where they would have their subjects pay attention to little bumps on a rotating drum, of different coarseness or fineness. And then there was a tone playing in the room.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And if they were told to discriminate when the bumps were changed from coarse to just slightly less coarse or more coarse, the subject would signal, okay, that happened. And then over time, the area of the brain responsible for touch in adults expanded the map of that. So adult plasticity was very interesting, however, is if they did the exact same thing,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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but they were told to attend to slight changes in the frequency of the tone. It didn't matter what they were doing with their fingers. The auditory cortex changed and the somatosensory, the touch map didn't. And so it's proof positive that it's not just a behavior in adulthood, but the combination of behavior and- An awareness of the shift in perception that drives adult plasticity.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And I find those studies to be, well, first of all, they aren't discussed enough. That feature isn't discussed enough. And second of all, it basically says that awareness is the gate to brain change. Sure. And I think that fits perfectly with everything that you've been talking about.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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We have such a deficit model of life. And this also fits with the Kahneman stuff, right? That, you know, people work much harder to avoid a loss than they will for a gain. And it seems to be...

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You've transcended the typical notion of loss.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Well, I'm not as evolved in that aspect, certainly others as well, as you are. But when I started my lab, I used to teach my students something, which was, okay, we're going to get a lot more rejections and have to do a lot more revisions than we are going to get acceptances on papers and grants.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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So the best thing that you can do, which is what I had to do for myself, one of the best things you might consider would have been a gentler way to say it, but I said one of the best things you can do, because that's the way I talk sometimes, is to... create a long arc of positive feedback loops when something good happens.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But that when something negative happens, let yourself feel it acutely and then move on fast. And like, so if I were to plot this, it would basically be like an accepted paper will delight me and motivate me for many, many months, if not years, but a rejection or a tough revision where we're looking at another year or two of experiments, I'd allow myself maybe a day and a half

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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of just being, you know, utterly crushed and then right back to it.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah. And reviews, I learned from my postdoc advisor, and I love this, is he used to say, reviews always make papers better. Even if you hate them, they always make papers better. They never make papers worse. Sometimes they make papers a little bit harder to track because like there's this weird figure put in just to satisfy a reviewer. Kind of like, what is this?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But everyone eventually realized what that figure is about anyway. And so I adopted the idea that reviews, red ink, critical feedback are just ways of getting better, which has also been essential in the podcasting sphere. Because if I've ever gotten anything wrong, believe me, I hear about it in the comments.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And sometimes it can be embarrassing, but you just look at it as an opportunity to address your humanness and

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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move forward you know correct it and move forward but i think a lot of people try and maintain this air of perfection like there's some sort of fabergé egg that instead of living life like a work of art where it has dimples and cracks and acne and and all the rest and it's human i think a lot of people um want to present themselves to the world like a fabergé egg like that's just absolutely flawless but the problem with that is going out the next day

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You mean in terms of a field and what's acceptable?

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah, things have certainly changed. And look, you've done a tremendous amount to pioneer that change. I mean, it's not one study or 10 study or 20 studies.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I mean, there's now a catalog of incredibly groundbreaking work that you've... I don't know if you used intentionally or you're just following your interests, but that have transformed the way that we think about the mind and its role in our physiology and so on. I was...

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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hoping to get your reflections on something that I sometimes say that's probably wrong, but that is helpful to me because, and hopefully to other people too, because it, I think, captures some of the circuit dynamics related to reward and reinforcement, and it sometimes resurfaces on the internet.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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that addiction, among other things, is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring someone pleasure. And I used to attach to that statement, enlightenment, if there is such a thing, is a progressive broadening of the things that bring us pleasure. And one thing that struck me throughout today's conversation is that it seems like you're able to look at pretty much anything

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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through a bunch of different facets, take on other points of view, so strong theory of mind, while holding on to your own perceptions, right? You're not drifting off from yourself. You're remaining, you know, of self, but taking on other perspectives.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And that flexibility of thinking and that expansiveness, like looking at things as good, bad, maybe, I don't know, I don't know what's true or what could be true and really challenging preconceived notions. It seems very powerful. Do you believe in enlightenment? And was the description I just gave anything like the way you envisioned it?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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It has indeed. And it's helped a tremendous number of people, both in the form of scientific findings, which are then shared with people through books and through podcasts. And I'm just so grateful that you came here today to share with us. This is really, as vast as it's been, you know, just a subset of the discoveries that you've made. So, you you know, a couple of things.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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First of all, thank you for coming here today.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I've thoroughly enjoyed this and I love, love, love your work and it's, caused me to think differently about things. And today's discussion is going to make me and I know so many other people think differently about everything. I mean, very, very few discussions that I'll hold will make me rethink my thinking about everything. This one certainly will.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And also for continuing to do the work that you're doing. I mean, it's clear that you embody and live the discoveries that you make. And it's not just an academic pursuit that then allows you to and appropriately collect all the amazing awards. titles, but that it really serves and that you live it. So thank you for that as well. And then two more questions, very briefly.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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The floor is yours, but would you consider coming back again to share with us some additional findings is the second to last question. And then I'm just thinking that maybe the last question is a so that it sticks in people's minds, would you be willing to share the song?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I love the song and thanks for saying you'll come back again. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. I hope you found it to be as fascinating as I did. To learn more about Dr. Langer's work, to find links to her books and workshops and other resources, please see the show note captions.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please click follow for the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

12093.806

And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

12110.598

We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

12127.454

Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And I assure you, it's not all just about positive thinking. In fact, Dr. Ellen Langer gets us to think differently about scientific questions, our health, and just about everything else in the world. You'll soon see she has a quite unique way of thinking, not just about science and health, but also about life in general and what makes for a truly good life.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Dr. Ellen Langer is a true luminary and pioneer in this area of mind-body health. And she's a fabulous teacher as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I want to talk about three themes that you raised. The first one is this mind-body notion. And now, even as I say it, mind-body, I feel like a hint of guilt because I completely agree that the division of mind and body is one of the greatest mistakes of thinking in psychology and Western medicine that ever existed.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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In fact, a lot of my, you know, secret mission in this podcast is to remind people every single episode, it seems that, you know, the brain and body are connected bidirectionally through the nervous system, but other systems too. Like there's no, there's no single system, hormone system, nervous system, immune system that doesn't, that doesn't

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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you know, cross the blood brain barrier and go back and forth.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I love it. I've spent a lot of time trying to learn the history of medicine and the merge of philosophy and medicine. There's a wonderful book that if

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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anyone is suffering from insomnia, they should check out because it's extremely detailed and difficult to listen to or read, but it's called The Prince of Medicine, which basically details all the reasons why we are so confused about how medicine is done and should be done. And it has to do with rules and restrictions and cultural conventions. And it's a whole barbed wire mess, basically.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But it includes this mess that was created for us, which is this idea that somehow because The brain is perhaps the seat of our consciousness. To many people, they believe that. But certainly, you know, like if I were to lose a few fingers on my left hand,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I'm not sure I would fundamentally be a different person, but if I lost a few millimeters or the equivalent amount of real estate in my brain, my personality could very well change, perhaps for the better, some would say. And I'm probably now hoping for that event. But all kidding aside, I think the mind-body distinction has really poisoned our thinking about what's possible. Yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And the other experiments that you described point to what's possible. And I want to talk about those. But maybe if we could just hover on this notion of mind and body as a single thing, that there's an us. I don't want to get too philosophical here, but that there's an us and our body carries us forward in motor behavior.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But how should we conceptualize the self if we don't have a mind-body distinction?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer. Dr. Ellen Langer, welcome. Thank you, Andrew. So great to have you here. There's so many topics that you've worked on and shed light on that impact our daily lives and our internal world and our external world and how they interact. I want to know your definition of mindfulness.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah. Well, what I love is I'm going to first reflect. What I love is the flexibility of your thinking around these things. Again, it's like maybe exercise, the effects of exercise are epiphenomena. So in thinking about mind-body, I can't get my – no pun intended – my head around – This distinction that if I lose a certain piece of my body, I'm not fundamentally changed.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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But if I lose a piece of neural real estate, I'm fundamentally different. That's the only thing that anchors me to the idea that they're separate.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah, I'll buy that explanation. Yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to probe this because I think nowadays people think, oh, you know, if I breathe in a certain way, I'll change my state of mind, which is true. If I think differently... get stressed or relaxed, I'll change the way that I breathe. I mean, I think that we're starting to understand the bidirectionality of these things.

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Well, we're probing mind-body and their interconnectedness. And so this iridologist, I've never heard that term before, this iridologist, it could be, based on what we were discussing a few moments ago, it could be that the suggestion that there was a problem with your gallbladder led to a problem with your gallbladder? Or do you think that she had some or he had some diagnostic knowledge?

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Yeah. What are your thoughts on things like acupuncture? And when I think about acupuncture, I'm not just thinking about the needles. The few times I've been to an acupuncturist, the first thing they do is they ask you to stick out your tongue. They are able to diagnose tongue texture and color and

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And it could take on practical forms, theoretical forms.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Might I ask what –

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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more specifically, how our thoughts impact our health. Dr. Ellen Langer was one of the first people to systematically explore the mind-body connection with scientific rigor. Her laboratory has made a large number of truly fascinating findings.

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I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink with adaptogens. I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 is because it is the highest quality and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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What that means is that AG1 ensures that you're getting all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients to form a strong foundation for your daily health. AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics that support a healthy gut microbiome.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune system status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily, my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust, and my mood and mental focus are at their best.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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In fact, if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2 with your order of AG1. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.

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Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

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What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal seller adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman. Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again, that's Juve, spelled J-O-O-V-V.com slash Huberman to get up to $400 off. So much of our developmental wiring is based on learning how to predict what's going to happen next.

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I mean, you think about object constancy that kids, you know, of a certain age, you put a ball behind your back, they think it disappeared. Eventually, they realize just because you moved your arm and the ball behind your back doesn't mean that the ball is gone. This kind of thing.

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True, right. There's always a portal to a different outcome. And I'm catching on to your mode of thinking here. This is actually what I'm trying to do because I think, you know, the brain is a prediction-making machine. In addition to doing other things, it regulates heartbeat, all the autonomic stuff, right, heartbeat, digestion, et cetera.

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It remembers things, and it's a prediction-making machine, at least those three things. I feel like the prediction-making aspect of our neural circuitry is what leads us to this notion of having control or wanting control. Because I think a lot of what's happening in our conversation in the backdrop of these experiments is to what extent do we have control over outcomes?

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I feel like close to the end of each year, which we just passed recently, these lists come out.

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I woke up early this morning and my first thoughts of the day I like to think have some Importance for something, who knows? It's when my mind seems clearest for at least a nanosecond. And my first thought was that the pattern that I seem to be perpetually in is one of whatever I'm doing, unless I'm podcasting or reading a research paper,

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that my mind is constantly flitting to the other things that I think I should be doing. And it's sad. And it's something I've been working on for a very long time. And I'm able to hold my, for lack of a better word, attention on things to accomplish tasks in my life and to be present with people as it were. But I thought-

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Right. It could be an asset. I think that for me what I realize is most of the shoulds are just total lies.

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And also they don't – they're just lies. They're not actually coming from – I'm not hearing other people's voices in my head. You should do this. It's not parental narrative or anything. It's just – it's just contamination of a, like of a useless type. It's not like listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio while I'd like make dinner or something. And it was so pleasant, right?

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You know, you hear an evening discussion about the news or talk show or whatever on the radio while cooking. And so that kind of, quote unquote, distraction felt really meaningful. I felt like when I lived alone that I had other people in the room with me. This is different.

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This is, it feels as if it detracts from some essence of the behavior that I'm in, even if the behavior is just getting out of bed in the morning.

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No, but they feel intrusive. They don't feel welcome. Like, because I know what I'm going to do each day. I have a policy for myself of doing one work thing each day, maybe in one or two blocks, and I try and really put everything I have into those. It's kind of a recent evolution of not trying to do three things in a day.

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Maybe it's a function of getting older, but I get so much more satisfaction and get truly so much more done from just doing one thing in my work life each day.

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Well, maybe I'm running the script backwards. Let me put it differently. The level of satisfaction that I feel from having, say, worked on a chapter of my book for a couple of hours or even 45 minutes or from going for a run without my phone and just enjoying the run, it still –

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blows me away how much I enjoy things that would fall under the category of simple things or things that I experience in isolation as compared to how little I enjoy and sometimes reflect on how punishing quote-unquote multitasking is, like being in a text conversation while I'm walking on the beach.

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Well, I love that notion. I mean, I will routinely – these articles just get served up to me in my Google feed or something. Like the five things that people regret most on their deathbed. I think these lists are terrible. I do too. I think they're terrible because – Without fail, the number one, two, or three is always, I wish I hadn't worked as much.

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I've derived tremendous pleasure from my work. But also tremendous relationships. Sure. The tremendous, excuse me, levels of insight into what I think are insights anyway.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah.

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Exactly. I mean, I'm constantly in pinch me moments with the podcast. That was also true when I was running my lab and then I decided to transition more to this and other things. But I mean, this notion that one wishes they'd worked less, it's such a sad thing to even think about. But it also implies that

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You know, somebody who enjoys their work doesn't enjoy their family or their relationships, and that certainly isn't true either. So there are all these assumptions that are written into these lists. I'm actually quite opposed to lists of that sort in a short media article form because I think, A, it – clearly doesn't change behavior. I mean, people have been talking about, you know, drink less.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Well, smoking was eradicated mostly from this country through different mechanisms. But, you know, sleep more, stress less. I mean, these lists come out, and they don't change behavior at all.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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If I relax in the two or three hours before going to sleep, Especially if I dim the lights, I actually require a full two to three hours less of sleep to wake up feeling refreshed. My criteria is what does it take to wake up feeling reasonably refreshed?

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Yeah, this is such an important study. I was going to bring it up later, but I'm so glad you brought it up now. These days, a tremendous number of people are tracking their sleep. I do it through my, you know, my sleep mattress cover. I love getting my sleep score. I like to see what I got.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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People do with the, with the Oura Ring or the Whoop Band or, you know, pick your favorite technology nowadays or Apple Watch, whatever. If I understand this study correctly, the perception of how much sleep people got based on their knowledge of a number, a score, et cetera, dictates their cognitive performance and their physical wellbeing.

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I mean, this runs countercurrent to like everything in the wellness biohacking movement. It jibes, however, with the data that I'm aware of. I think it was a sleep lab at Stanford that, for instance, positive anticipation of next day events reduces your sleep need and improves the quality of your sleep. Just being excited for the next day can make it such that the five hours you got is sufficient.

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Well, I do think that there was a I'll sleep when I'm dead mindset that was diminishing people's health for a while. I do think it's great that books like Matt Walker's, you know, Why We Sleep, et cetera, came out. Although that book focused more on the bad things that happen if you don't sleep enough.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And I think Matt, who's done a series on here about sleep, would now say, you know, it's great that we're... now focused largely on the things that one can do to get agency over one's sleep. But I think that there's such a thing as creating a sleep need anxiety and then people can't sleep. We're not going to dissolve into a puddle of our own tears on one poor night's sleep.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Well, I always say if you're going to get less than your typical or required night's sleep, hopefully it's for good reasons. Hopefully you're having a good time. It's when you get the fire alarm in the middle of the night that it becomes, as you said, stressful. I'd like to just... Briefly go back to the counterclockwise study.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Could you describe a little bit more about the practical aspects of that study? So these were people who, let's say, were on average how old? Was it somewhere between like 30 and 50?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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For instance, today you'll learn about a study that Dr. Langer did in which she brought quite old people into her laboratory, or rather she designed a laboratory such that people lived in this laboratory,

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I love this approach to science of seeing what may be. I have to say there's this little script running in the back of my mind, and now I'm not going to judge it. The sorts of experiments and the general line of inquiry that you've been involved in for some time now –

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to me, runs countercurrent to my perception of, I'm just going to be honest because I'm a West Coast guy, the Harvard campus and the idea that science is done in a particular way. You know, a very brief anecdote, you know, the folks that founded at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur were at Stanford at one point.

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They weren't professors, but there's a story, and I believe the story that they had proposed at that time, a class on mindfulness and breathing. To bring Stan Graf through and some other people. And this was probably the late 70s, early 80s. And whatever the cultural norms were at Stanford at that time, they claimed they were basically run off campus, went and started Esalen.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I don't know if it's a true story, but I like the story anyway. Yeah. My lab at Stanford ran a study on particular patterns of breathing along with David Spiegel and how it can be used to self-adjust stress levels and reduce stress levels. And nowadays there's grants given for this kind of stuff and meditation. So there's been a huge shift in the academic cultural milieu.

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But given that you've been running these sorts of – seeing what may be types of studies for a number of years at a campus that I consider is more kind of like East Coast dyed-in-the-wool notions of how science is done. I want to know, A – How was it received early on? B, did you care? C, is it in your nature and has it always been in your nature to kind of test the elements?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Because I sense, but I could be completely wrong because I'm not a psychologist, that you delight in kind of not poking the bear, but playing with ideas that are kind of heretical.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Great. Okay.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I love hearing that because it shatters my notions of kind of East Coast Ivy League academia.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Well, clearly it's worked out. And nowadays, you know, there are multiple labs at Harvard working on happiness, you know, working on mindfulness. And I mean, you've pioneered an entire field in a way. But I'm more interested in the way of thinking that was the eight-year-old Ellen Langer.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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How did you come to realize this thing that we call mindfulness? I mean, certainly in the last 20 years, the notion of meditation as a valuable practice has become pretty common. And prior to that, it was considered a little bit alternative, hippy-dippy.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I have to introduce you to my good friend. Rick Rubin, who's been on this podcast a few times because he he wrote the creative act. He's basically his life has been spent, you know, trying to pull out the best creative works from musicians. And he's been involved in other things, too. And he's just as a, you know, a kind of supernatural level of ability to do this.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And he keeps coming back to this thing in our discussions, but also in his book and and elsewhere about how the the. The impediment, the greatest impediment to the creative process is to think about the publicity or cultural milieu that it's going to exist in. That he really believes that these things are offerings to God, to the universe, to whatever that come through us.

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And that the barrier is, it's almost like the self-awareness is the barrier.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost, it is very affordable.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. I feel like one of the major detriments to living the way that you're describing, which by the way has tremendous gravitational pull in my mind, like it's such a better way to go through life, right? And I subscribe also to this notion that Pretty much everything was made up besides the laws of nature, right?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I mean, to me, physics is real and chemistry is real. Biology is real.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Right. I mean, you know, seeing what may be, like, I mean, I could say, listen, because of the laws of gravity, objects fall down, not up. But of course, we could create exceptions to that. But that humans make up All sorts of rules. Culture dictates. Groupthink dictates.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And it seems that one of the major detriments to living in this freer way, this more exploratory way that we're talking about today, is this whole thing of theory of mind.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You know, that we are able, for better or worse, to get into the minds of others and, in some cases— create ideas, true or not, about how we will be judged if we do A, B, or C. And in doing so, we give up some real estate.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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It's interesting how now in Western society we embrace this idea of presence, but it gets merged with these kind of more rigid terms like focus and attention.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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but the laboratory itself was designed to resemble the environment, everything from the types of furniture, the types of dishes, the types of music, et cetera, that those people had lived in 20 years prior. When those subjects lived in that laboratory for less than one week, the change in the environment and their interaction with that environment led them to have far more mobility,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Can I ask you to— No.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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We're here together. Could I ask you for any reflections that come up around this recent thought train I was on? I was laughing at the fact that our species... for whatever reason, seems to keep wanting to build technologies. And that much of our effort these days is focused on trying to undo some of the ills of the technologies that we've developed.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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So I use smartphones and I love them and I use social media and I think it's terrific for certain things. But of course, these things have issues just like the automobile created issues, the television created issues and on and on. Okay. fossil fuels and all of this. People will debate fossil fuels. But anyway, you get the point.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Every technology brings with it some convenience or some way that humans have been able to overcome nature in some way or work with nature, right? You know, we can't fly, so we build planes. Okay. And I just decided to look at this through a different lens. Like, this is amazing. We're sending rockets into space. We'll probably colonize Mars not too long from now if Elon figures it out.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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And I get the sense he probably will. We've got AI. Just this last week, there's this whole AI thing. And so then I started thinking, like, you know, at what point do we just kind of stop? And the answer is pretty clear. It's unlikely that humans are ever going to stop this kind of itch to develop technology. And... I thought, wow, you know, like we're the only species that does this.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Like, you know, if the raccoons get together and they think, okay, like let's figure out how to pick locks, like actually how to pick locks as opposed to just go in through crawl spaces. If they've been working on that, they're still failing miserably, right? As far as I know. So it's something so unique to our species among the old world primates to develop technologies. Other animals do it.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Crows do it. Other primates do it. But we special, I mean, we are, really the utmost example of this. And I just wondered, like, what do you think the human compulsion is to develop technologies?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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What do you think that's about? I'm not asking us to go into evolutionary psychology, but what do you think it is that humans have this generative spirit in their... mind-body, same thing, to express and to create things that have some durability in time or that are just an expression of where we are. I mean, it's so unusual.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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You know, sandcastle no selfie. You're just doing it to do it. I actually do a lot of writing these days that like in my brain I've always called sandcastle, no selfie. Like it's getting washed away and then someone says, well, you could take a photo of it. It's like, no, actually, I just do it just to see. It's just a practice of getting out what I feel I need to get out.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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This is why at some point in my life, I'm going to tell my team six months and I'm done, and I'm gonna go do art. And I just don't wanna scare anybody. But I just, I love the idea of being able to switch venue and possibly to, even change identity, which is something I'd like to talk to you about.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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So mindfulness as a practice of exploration, presence and exploration is perhaps a slightly better perhaps way to think about it.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Turns out it's the best way to learn. I researched an episode of a solo episode of this podcast I did to figure out what are the best ways to study and learn. It was based on a course that I had guest lectured in at Stanford, it turns out. we have to be careful now. I have to be careful saying things like the best.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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One of the most effective ways to learn is to self-test for what one knows and doesn't know, but not for sake of evaluation, but for sake of enhancing recall and depth of consolidation.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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The danger of awards that carry titles like Genius or even Nobel. I'm not going to poke at my few friends that happen to have Nobels because they've done beautiful work, but it's rare that people who get Nobels do much after that. They become great sources of fundraising for universities, so you get leveraged for that.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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and I don't think anyone's going to shed a tear for a Nobel Prize winner here, but this brings me to this notion of labels, not just rankings and performance, but labels. Sure.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I have a friend who was in elite, elite special operations for a number of years. Very smart guy, very philosophical. And he once said to me, for reasons that I don't recall, he said, you know, the two most powerful but also dangerous words in the English language are I am.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Because anything that follows the words I am will completely constrain your notions of what's possible and what's not possible. Right. And I said, you know, why are you telling me this, right? Because I pointed out that he was from special operations.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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He said, you know, that he and his teammates had a mode of refreshing their mindset around particular operations that were, because of the division of the military he was in, et cetera, it was quite varied. It wasn't like they were just sort of doing one type of thing. They had to be very adaptive. And he said that they had to completely wipe away

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6251.977

this I am component of their vocabulary, except as it related to the word adaptive. It was like, I am adaptive. But there was never a title to who they were, what they were, once they entered the context of a planning execution of one of these operations. Very interesting way of thinking about identity, how it shapes mindset, how it constrains it and opens doors. And

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6278.001

converts things into, um, action and, uh, or, or failure to, to execute. Yeah. Yeah. I found it very intriguing that, you know, cause here's a guy that wouldn't normally think like, think of this stuff, but it turned out he said that was a very potent tool for them. Yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6410.707

I know what you don't do. You don't slam on the brakes. You slowly come off the gas. I've driven on the East Coast a little bit.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6584.4

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Now, I've discussed on this podcast before that the PFASs, or forever chemicals like Teflon, have been linked to major health issues such as endocrine disruption, that means hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really important to avoid them.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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This is why I recently fell in love with Our Place products, especially one of their cooking pans, the Titanium Always Pan Pro. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PFAS and toxin free. They're beautifully designed and function extremely well for all your cooking needs.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6623.28

Most mornings I cook eggs in it, I cook ground beef in it, ground venison, and the Titanium Pan is also designed in a way that allows eggs and meat to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. It's extremely easy to clean, and like all Our Place products, it's nice to look at when sitting on the counter or on the stove.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

663.7

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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For a limited time, Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount on their innovative Titanium Always Pan Pro, designed to last a lifetime and completely toxin-free. Visit fromourplace.com slash Huberman and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20 to claim the offer.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6656.334

So if one has parents, let's say, who are quote unquote slowing down a bit and they're talking a little bit about some aches and pains and there's a stairwell in the house, for instance, and they're starting to say things like, you know, at some point we're either going to have to move into a place that doesn't have a stairwell or put one of those chair lifts things or maybe just move into the downstairs.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6680.879

Do you think that... In just thinking about that, they're going to accelerate the demise of their locomotor ability?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

677.406

It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6846.489

I've always had glasses for reading at night when my eyes would get fatigued or something. But recently, I... came to my awareness that my vision at a distance is very, very sharp. I'm like an eagle. I can, you know, read numbers, you know, very far away. But my vision up close has been diminishing. I find myself straining a bit more even in the distance.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6868.237

So I started wearing, you know, eyeglasses.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6871.84

Or should I have the book further away? But, you know, I've just kind of defaulted to eyeglasses. But I realized that because I understand the neuroplasticity of the visual system that I'm certainly accelerating the demise of my near vision by wearing glasses. And so I'm trying to, you know, balance the two.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

6897.941

The Snellen is the letters and numbers, yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

707.514

Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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better cognitive function, and a large number of other markers of biological aging reversed, which is absolutely remarkable and speaks to the incredible power that the mind has over our biology. That's just one example of the sorts of experiments that Dr. Langer has done, again, with a tremendous amount of scientific rigor.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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been thinking about deadlines a lot lately. And we hear stories of, you know, people being told, I need this done in 15 days. And if people are forced to do it in 15 days, somehow they're able to get it done in 15 days. And certainly there are limits to this. If you told me I need to write a thousand pages in five minutes, I... There would be very little on each page.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7306.676

But staying within the bounds of reason of what we're talking about when we say there's a deadline in X number of days, why do you think it is that our perception of what's possible tends to scale with, A, what's been done before, so precedent or no precedent, the four-minute mile, for instance, until Bannister broke it. You know, no one else broke it. He broke it.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7327.303

Lots of people have broken it since. Yeah. and did immediately afterwards. So what do you think about this notion of what's possible in terms of preordained human decision constraints? Like no one can break the four-minute mile. Someone breaks the four-minute mile, now we reset to a new reality in time and in sort of capability.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7349.254

Because I feel like much of what we believe about ourselves is also constrained by our beliefs about the outside world. And as you pointed out earlier, all of that's just a human script that is the play we're all in. Yeah.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7415.613

It's a great answer. I'm trying to think about the use of the scientific method, which is what you use in your lab and in your research. And why it is that you haven't, it seems, challenged the scientific method itself, except at the level of like what hypothesis you're gonna test.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

743.372

Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on the Huberman Lab Podcast and elsewhere about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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I mean, in order to do great science, I mean, at some point you need statistics, you need sample size to be sufficient. You know, the rigor of your studies is as important as the originality of the questions you're asking. And so it seems that you've embraced the scientific method as at least useful.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7608.05

Not long ago, we went through one of the biggest public health crises of at least my lifetime, and at least two major controversies arose. One was the extent to which masks should or shouldn't be worn and are useful or no. The other is about the so-called vaccines.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

761.587

how soft it is, how firm it is, how breathable it is, the temperature, all play into your comfort and needs to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you'll take a brief two minute quiz and it will ask you questions such as, do you tend to sleep on your back, your side of your stomach?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Dexedrine is basically speed.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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It will also ask you, do you tend to run hot or cold during the night or the early part of the night, et cetera, things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't, but either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

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Yeah, and experience matters, at least in my view, because – so, for instance, going back to vaccines, right? I'm not trying to create unnecessary controversy here, but it's – absolutely clear to me that there are people who believe that, for instance, the COVID vaccines were immensely valuable. On the whole, it saved lives, et cetera.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7855.497

And there are other people who are absolutely convinced that the vaccines caused injury, perhaps to them or to people that they know. And both sides as it were, seem to know a lot about their side. And so the discussions aren't really discussions because the people that felt that they had a vaccine injury know an immense amount about that injury, the context, and others who had it.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7882.839

the people who had a different experience of the vaccines or have a different stance of the COVID vaccine know a tremendous amount about the statistics and mass of what the general outcomes were as a consequence. Okay, so it's futile, right? Like it's not a meaningful discussion.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

791.087

I started sleeping on the Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had. It's absolutely clear to me that having a mattress that's right for you does improve one's sleep.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7925.953

Well, then I'd like to challenge an idea since that seems to be a challenging assumption.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7932.695

I'd like to challenge the assumption that as people get older, they become more set in their ways. Because Many times today I'm hearing that as one – and I'm getting older. I now can say I'm so happy I can say I'm almost 50. I actually love getting older.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

7948.662

I feel better now at almost 50 than I did in my 20s. Yeah. Psychologically and physically. Yeah. And I felt great then. Yeah. So I challenge the assumption that we get worse with age. Yeah, no, I'm with you and I'm much older than you are. So do we get set in our ways or maybe we're more flexible in our thinking?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

802.257

If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman, take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com slash Huberman to get up to 25% off.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8156.612

God forbid you're human, you spilled a piece of food.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

821.51

I think for a lot of people, a practice of meditation feels like the best or most obvious gateway into this thing that we're calling mindfulness.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8297.955

It's like our sense of justice kind of gets in the way sometimes. I mean, sense of justice can be very important in society, so don't get me wrong. But, for instance, recently I had the experience where a news story came out. It wasn't about me. And those are the only ones you read, right?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8317.529

It came out and the headline was, I'm just going to say what it was, that so-and-so's home, this famous person's home, was destroyed in the L.A. fires. Had a description of what had happened. It had a photograph of the home before and after, the devastation. And I immediately got upset because that was not their home. That was my home.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8343.096

Okay, now, I hadn't lived in that home in a while, so there was no reason for them to say that it was my home. I wasn't upset that they didn't say it was my home. But there was my... Toyota 4Runner parked in the driveway.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8356.367

Like basically the whole thing was made up.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8358.91

And I actually know the reporter because they had tried to contact me once before. They had somehow got a hold of my phone number, which frustrates me in addition to that.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8370.123

And I realized they're just making up lies.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8373.187

They're not even attempting to fact check. Now this was a minor thing whose home it was perhaps, but they made a bunch of issues around this. And then another article came out about this person and another one. And I basically, I don't believe anything that I read, certainly from that particular venue.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8390.814

And then I started to realize that probably half or more of what we read in traditional popular press is just made up. And no one's fact-checking this stuff because how could they? Like, how could they know? And of course, I'm not going to pursue this in any kind of legal way. I don't really care. But my sense of justice is what frustrated me. And as soon as I went...

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8414.389

Like this reporter, so desperate for a story and to capitalize on the horrible events, like felt that they needed to do – and I thought this is like ridiculous and our species is just so weird. This is what I always default to in the end, whether or not it's about technology, about something else. I mean real tragedies are real tragedies. And when those happen, as the fires were, it upsets me.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8437.683

But – So much of like what grabs our attention and the drama of things is just humans being ridiculous. Sometimes lying, sometimes in service to one thing or pretending it's in service to justice when in fact it's in service to themselves or a combination of things. And I think as I've hit this, like what I hope is a new vista in my life, I'm thinking to myself, like, wow, we're really...

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8465.348

obvious like we're so obviously silly like the game that i bring up rick rubin again he he has this saying that he repeats over and over to me he said like there are only two truths nature and professional wrestling he loves professional wrestling he watches hours and hours of professional wrestling and i said why do you do that isn't that um he said it's made up and everyone knows it's made up

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8489.473

Which is why it actually is one of the few things that's real. Because we all know it's made up. So whether or not they become allies or they become enemies in a given match or whether or not somebody breaks the rules and the ref pretends they don't see, it's theater. And it's designed to show you the theater that is human nature. I never had any appreciation for professional wrestling.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8509.829

But he's right. And so once you start looking, it's all made up.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8524.705

I realized I was the one being ridiculous. I'm upset because there's some injustice. Because what? Because I don't want my forerunner in a news article about someone else's home. Maybe that person had a home that looked very similar. But I guess it was the break with my assumption that... The traditional media tries to get things right. That they at least try.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8544.045

And in this case, the person clearly didn't even try. They had access to the real information.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

866.181

So maybe it's the time investment as opposed to something specific about the meditation practice. That's a heretical idea in the world of wellness.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8743.11

What do you think it is about hard events that are life-changing that anchor our mindfulness?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8798.976

my postdoc advisor, well, all three of my advisors died, suicide, cancer, cancer. So the joke is you don't want me to work for you, but in all seriousness, and I was very, very close with the middle one, but the last one as well. And he died of pancreatic cancer, as it were. we did multiple fesh thrifts for him, celebrations of life, right?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8822.77

You know, there's like in academia, they can't get enough fesh thrifts and this, you know, and I'll never forget Ben getting up his, the celebration of life in front of all the big ups at Stanford and all these people and editors flew in. I mean, they were like over 200 people there, president of Stanford was there. And he said, you know, if I had known that,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8841.983

I was going to be so celebrated and that people were going to be so kind to me, I would have, you know, died a lot earlier, you know. That was the first thing he said.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

8849.128

And the second thing he said is, you know, if I could do it over again, you know, one of these if I could do it over again things, he said, I would have never agreed to review so many papers, review so many grants, and I would have eaten a lot more sushi and a lot more ice cream. And that was it. He had a good relationship with death. I interviewed him for hours even before I had a podcast.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

887.549

I love the way that you look at things that we take for granted as operating one way through this different perspective. Our mutual friend, Allie Crum, told me the story that at one point she was in a conversation with you and you said, well, maybe exercise and all its effects on our health is just an epiphenomenon. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

90.25

So today, Dr. Langer and I talk about how the acquisition of knowledge, just simply learning about certain biological mechanisms, as well as your mindset about various aspects of your health and wellbeing, can powerfully dictate your health and wellbeing. We talk about longevity. We talk about exercise and weight loss. We talk about infectious disease.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9020.618

The will to live is a very interesting thing.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9043.293

Well, I align with you on that stance. I mean I use the name only because they're sometimes referenced as such. But a focus of the podcast recently has been to emphasize that in that group and others – there's a brain area that's available to everybody because everybody has it, which is this anterior mid-cingulate cortex, which is activated when people embrace new forms of learning and challenges.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9065.869

And it does seem to correlate with maintaining cognitive function into later age. And it's roped into, excuse me, neurally it is roped into, it's linked up with the dopamine reward circuitry and other circuitries in a way that ties it somewhat to this notion of the will to live, being... related to the embracing new learnings or at least new challenges.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

907.361

I think, first of all, I don't think most people are familiar with what epiphenomena are, but this idea of looking at things through a different portal seems so valuable, regardless of what the experimental outcome turned out to be. And perhaps we should touch on that experimental outcome about labor versus non-labor.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9119.497

This makes me wonder why we have names for hospitals like Hospital for Sick Children.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9124.959

I've always been bothered by that title. Sorry for anyone that's been treated there and had a great experience because I imagine it's a great hospital.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9392.229

It keeps coming back to powers of observation, asking questions, depth as opposed to speed. Yeah. These seem to be the kind of basic contour.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9578.323

Yeah, and masterfully, and masterfully, yeah, masterfully. And what I realize is that we're always to some extent in choice, as they say.

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9587.229

And I think to some people that will feel freeing, like, you know, I'm always in choice. I can, my house burned down. Well, you know, who knows what newness that will bring, these kinds of things. But to some people-

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9626.539

I can certainly adopt that. I also can feel the parts of me that I assume are what other people experience as well, which is that when one has so many degrees of freedom over how to respond, that itself can feel a bit overwhelming.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9675.063

At one time, that was considered okay. Nowadays, there are a couple things that are more complicated, I would argue. One... Earlier, you mentioned coddling of people that are, you know, aged, elderly. I hate that word now that I'm 77. Well, you are. No one would guess that you're 77. And yeah, your vitality is undeniable.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9701.305

This notion of coddling, you know, Jonathan Haidt wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, Anxious Generation. I have to wonder what it's like for kids growing up nowadays and teenagers constantly being told about this disorder and that disorder.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9716.436

And the idea that if you meet five out of ten of the menu of criteria that you are – you might even be this thing. You are blank as opposed to just having blank or struggling with blank.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9729.925

And we certainly over-prescribe medication in this country, certainly compared to other countries. The vast amount of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication is consumed in the United States. And certainly those medications can be valuable for people. I would argue, but they are over prescribed, I would also argue.

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9751.04

So my question is, if one grows up being told that they are fragile, that there's threat everywhere, or even that there's threat everywhere on social media, let's just like push into that, into that dent a little bit too, because that's Jonathan's idea. You know,

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9770.578

Sitting here talking to you, that now has me thinking, well, maybe my 18-year-old niece is perfectly capable of navigating this online landscape, and it's just me who's not capable of it. And so I'm going to decide that she's struggling. But maybe kids aren't getting enough physical activity, one could argue, on the basis of data. But do you see where I'm going here?

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Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9792.191

When one can kind of pivot to different lenses to look at something through – It increases the number of options but then at some point we have to decide are we coddling our kids too much or are we not coddling them too much?

Huberman Lab

Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity | Dr. Ellen Langer

9923.557

Yeah, certainly social media. gives it a literal score for followers and likes and things of that sort. So it's thumbs up, thumbs down. I mean, literally scoring performance in terms of what other people think. It's certainly training those circuits very robustly, whereas

Huberman Lab

Dr. Jamil Zaki: How to Cultivate a Positive, Growth-Oriented Mindset